Digital tools for climate change adaptation and mitigation

Abstract

KEY MESSAGES
◼ Digital tool functions for agricultural technical advice and performance assessment related to climate change adaptation and mitigation are limited.
◼ Tools for technical advice provided functions related to climate change adaptation more often than mitigation. Yet most tools (92%) addressed three or fewer climate change adaptation indicators.
◼ Technical advice with access to weather information or early warning systems for hazardous weather was the most common function of the tools analyzed.
◼ Performance assessment tools were predominantly GHG emission calculators.
◼ Features for inclusive communication with tool users (e.g., iconography, video or audio messages) included messaging (31% of tools) and voice and video (28%).
◼ Exemplary tool features for climate change adaptation and mitigation should inform future digital tool development for agriculture and food systems.
◼ Tools that provide coaching functions and support farmer input enable farmers to weigh the trade-offs of their decisions and add context on how to achieve and sustain change.
◼ Achieving scale for climate-informed digital tools does not just mean increasing farmers’ access to tools, but also supporting action recommendations in tools and identifying priority, large-scale impacts in terms of the level of climate risk mitigated and resilience built, or climate change mitigation achieved.