Climate change amplifies the impacts of other risks for smallholder farmers, such as extreme weather and pests and diseases. No longer regarded as a future challenge to be faced in the next few decades, climate disruption is already causing substantial losses to agriculture by speeding up biodiversity loss and the spread of crop pests and invasive species.
Invasive species have been estimated to cost Africa's agricultural sector $65.58bn per year. Taken together, the impacts of climate change undermine development gains and push people back into, or further into, poverty.
bwi empowers people with skills, tools and knowledge to adapt and become more resilient to the impacts of climate change on crops and landscapes. bwi brings technical expertise in addressing major pest and disease threats linked to climate change, notably the increased spread and impacts of invasive species.
Our approaches benefit livelihoods and biodiversity by ensuring agricultural sectors are embedded in healthy and climate-resilient and biodiverse landscapes with clean water and air, healthy soils and functional ecosystem services.
Our action
To deliver change, we:
- Support smallholder farmers and businesses with access to information and tools to assess climate risks and enhance their adaptive capacity
- Inform national and farm-level planning by developing pest and disease risk analytics that incorporate climate data
- Explore cutting-edge areas of research to improve climate adaptation practices including plant microbiome research