Aslihan Arslan is a Senior Technical Specialist (Research) in the Research and Impact Assessment Division (RIA), Strategy and Knowledge Department, IFAD. Prior to joining IFAD in January 2017, she worked at FAO as a Natural Resource Economist primarily focusing on research and policy support on Climate-Smart Agriculture. Prior to that, she was a Post-Doctoral Research Economist at the Poverty Reduction, Equity and Development research group of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, in Germany. She holds a PhD and an MSc in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California, Davis, and a BA in Economics from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara (Turkey).

Session VI - Climate Change and Development 27/10/2017 11:45 - 13:15

Climate resilience in rural Zambia: Evaluating farmers’ response to El Niño-induced drought

This paper examines the impacts of the El Niño during the 2015/2016 season on maize productivity and incomes in rural Zambia. The analysis aims at identifying whether and how sustainable land management (SLM) practices and livelihood diversification strategies have contributed to moderate the impacts of the El Niño related drought. This is done using a specifically designed survey called the El Niño Impact Assessment Survey (ENIAS), which is combined with the 2015 wave of the Rural Agricultural Livelihoods Surveys (RALS), as well as high-resolution rainfall data from the Africa Rainfall Climatology version 2 (ARC2). This unique data set provides an opportunity to understand the impacts of shocks like El Niño that are expected to get more frequent and severe in Zambia, as well as understand the agricultural practices and livelihood strategies that can buffer household production and welfare from the impacts of such shocks to drive policy recommendations.

Other Speakers in this session:

Cristina Cattaneo (Fondazione Eni and CMCC)
Inflows and outflows of climate migrants: the impact on local conflict

Pierluigi Montalbano (University of Rome “La Sapienza” and University of Sussex)
Temperature Shocks, Growth and Poverty Threshold: Evidence from Rural Tanzania

Romina Cavatassi (IFAD)
Diversification under climate variability as part of CSA strategy in Zambia and Malawi