 Over to you Joy, would you like to, we've got a few people here. Okay, good afternoon, good evening, good morning from where you're joining us. And we're really happy to have you here today to this side event on dry lands and climate resilient development. We are looking at valuing climate variability. Thank you for joining this interesting session. We shall be looking at some etiquettes as we wait for others to join. So, feel free to type into the chat where you're joining us from your organization and anything interesting that you you recall about dry lands. This is an interesting session and be really happy to have you. We are here with IED, CELEP, DADO, Reconcile, Aldef, Kenyatta University, and also all of us are stakeholders within the Brescia research, where we are looking at how to build capacity for sustainable food and water security in dry lands. So we are the dry land session. Welcome. On the screen you can see the stretch of this session. I think as we go through it, think about dry lands, dry lands variable, are they fragile? Are they diverse? Think about all these things that you hear about dry lands. We will start actually with a session with an interactive poll that looks at what do you think about these dry lands that we so often imagine to be fragile and try to see can we use integrated approaches. The Zoom poll will have five statements about dry lands and you'll either vote whether you strongly agree or disagree and feel free to chat in the chat box as well. We shall be having three main presentations, mainly looking at a different way that we can look at dry lands, look at some examples, and also look at some policy implications of some of the variability that we see within the dry lands. I think now I'm glad to see many of you are continuing to indicate who you are and where you're from. I see some familiar names, feel very welcome. Feel free to continue typing in the chat. And I think we'll go directly to the poll. Feel free also to put other comments as we move along. So we are moving directly into the poll. And this will be question one says the natural environment in dry lands, especially low and very much rainfall is a major constraint for food production. Kindly you can strongly agree, agree, neither agree or disagree, disagree or strongly disagree. And any additional comments in the chat. I can see disagree is moving at 75%. Now at 83%, while 17 have agreed, and at 86%, the disagreement back to 75%, that the natural environment, or there are some who neither agree or disagree please you could write something about why you neither agree or disagree or strongly disagree. So strongly disagree and disagree is actually 71%. And so there's disagreement that actually the low and variable rainfall is a major constraint for food production. Okay, anybody who would like to add further on why they disagree or agree please feel free to just type in the chat. Thank you very much. So we are moving to the second question. Please, if you could all participate we notice that only a percentage participated in that question. Livestock mobility is a coping strategy. And this is mainly in response to pasture and water. And so far 100% have agreed. And that is just. So more people are responding. Thank you very much. So, this is still a volatile one. They are mixed reactions related to livestock mobility with 38% strongly disagreeing as the highest percentage. That's 29 plus 27. So 56% are agreeing either strongly or just agreeing that livestock mobility so far 617 people have participated kindly if you've not. You can do that. So still we can see the results here are mostly towards agreeing. We have about six people who are yet to participate. Please give your view. And also you may want to type something in the chat about your, your thinking towards why livestock mobility is a coping strategy or otherwise. Okay, so. So strongly agree at and agree at 61%. So we can move to question three dry land environments are fragile ecosystems. Thank you fill them on you to say a partially dream equals mobility, and that is why you're agreeing that it's a coping strategy thank you for that. And environments are fragile ecosystems. Again this is one where we have different opinion, mostly half half agreeing and half disagreeing. And still moving on, I still see the agree and disagree almost at 5050. I agree and strongly disagree, disagree and strongly disagree at 47% and agree at at 45. Thank you, Professor Sanya Chris I see you say that food production in dry lands is very complex and it can be looked at from various perspective of interest later on if we have time we may invite you to tell us this complex perspectives. Okay, so strongly agree and disagree is 45% and disagree and strongly disagree is 50%. So almost at par. That's a sentence that we something that we need to discuss father, and the 6% neither agree or disagree. We would need to, you know, discuss that father I see. Father comments of people introducing themselves. So some of these acronyms later to be good to just unpack them. So thank you. That's, this is a question where we are 5050. Are they fragile or not. Okay. And finally the last poll question. This is large scale agricultural production in the dry lands is a better way to ensure food security than small scale subsistence farming. So which way dry lands, which way dry lands, and already it's a disagreement. And strongly and and disagree that definitely we should not do dry large scale for agricultural production. Some voices have come with some agreement. And we see 14% that are agreeing compared to okay 12% agreeing and 88 disagreeing. Anybody else who needs to add in. Okay, thank you. I see you're still also continuing to introduce yourself. Welcome very much to this session. Any anybody else participating because we have 69 of the participants. I don't know that you're having challenges with clicking. So definitely this one goes towards disagreement. Okay. I think we can say that there are so many perceptions towards dry lands and whether dry lands are Westlands or whether they can be used and how would they be used sustainably. And so this side event as I had said earlier is looking mainly at what alternative perspective to dry lands and we are looking at what we call value invariability value in climate variability. And we want to then showcase some strategies and production systems that are definitely supporting this kind of value invariability, and then consider some policy implications of this perspective of value invariability. So those of you who have experience, you may continue to share also in the, in the chat, as we begin. I'm now going to bring to your attention our first presentation. Our first presentation by Zavario, who will introduce himself shortly is actually introducing to us this concept of value invariability. Welcome Zavario. Thank you, Joey. I've been working on past, I've been working on past for for the last 20 years. I'm editor on many people that you've seen in the chat. And I just move into the presentation because we don't have very much time. And if there is more time later, I will add information by myself. The past 200 years of fossil fuel based economies have heated up the planet and eliminated its biodiversity at an unprecedented pace. The impact on the natural cycles has has made climate variability and the related uncertainty a global issue. Failing to stop global warming is expected to lead to a global catastrophe scenario. Therefore, resilience to climate change, when we talk about resilience to climate change, we only refer to the to the several decades of unprecedented global climate variability, once global warming has been stopped. In the context of agricultural development, the response to high levels of variability in the natural environment has always been an effort to increase control, investing in reducing variability and trying to introduce stability. This modernist approach or project of emancipating agriculture from the vagaries of nature continues to enchant policy makers and donors alike. Efforts in this direction have relied on transfer of technology and mechanization schemes, dams and large scale irrigation, motorized water extraction, chemical fertilizer and pesticides. Even the current race for fighting climate change through green energy industrialization, as eloquently argued by Jess Gibbs in his 2020 documentary, The Planet of the Humans, remains within this money gangs nature perspective. Dependent as we are on externalizing costs and risks, we struggle to grapple with the idea of something that simply cannot be externalized. Is there another way? As the natural world is becoming more and more unpredictable under our eyes, scientists are calling for a fundamental rethinking of conventional globalized agriculture and food systems, no matter their merits, and a move away from dependence on energy intensive and resource intensive processes for externalizing nature's variability. The value of variability concept belongs to this perspective. It is rooted in lessons from regions of the world where climate variability is neither a novelty nor an anomaly. And it focuses on the experience and knowledge in small scale food production systems with a long track record of operating in these conditions, therefore demonstrating its significant and empirically tested levels of resilience. In the drylands, the availability of potential inputs expands and contracts dramatically through the unpredictable intervals between years. Pachy and itinerant rains of varying intensity make it impossible to predict from one year to the next if a crop will mature or grass will grow in a given location. Environmental variability is further increased as rainfall combines with other variables, for example the way biodiversity or soil or the morphology of the terrain can affect absorption and evapotranspiration. Environmental variability rules in the drylands, high both in time and in space, from the macro scale of inter-annual seasonal and regional variations all the way down to the micro-micro scale or plants and leaves or crops. For example, nutrient content changes within the life cycle of a plant and between day and night, but also between plants or between different parts of a plant. Users like pastoralists and dryland farmers learn to manage their relationship with the environment over time and space and across scales in order to turn such a restless change into valuable resources. They do so by finding ways of changing at the same pace with the environment and by keeping their options open to match the uncertain future. Adaptive drylands food systems specialize in achieving lower variability in outputs by matching the variability in the environment with variability integrated, deliberately integrated in the processes of production. Variability in processes is preferred to stability and uniformity. A variable range of locations is preferred to just one location. Keeping a variety of species in the head or a variety of crops in the field is preferred to keep in just one. Where variability is the norm, working with variability rather than against it means higher productivity and more resilience. Some groups of pastoralists in the Sahel move south at the beginning of the rainy season to meet the rains. Then as the season progresses, they follow the rains all the way back north to the edge of the Sahara where pasture is best. This strategy aims to keep the herds on green pasture for longer than it would be possible in any of the locations visited along the way. When successful, it stretches the rainy season in the experience of the animals. Similarly, some farming communities in the dry highlands of northern Ethiopia leave stones in their fields, reducing the surface of the soil and therefore the concentration of moisture in case of rain, increasing it. This effectively increases the average rainfall in the experience of the crop, same amount of rain covering a smaller surface, higher concentration. In both examples, the producer strategy consists in introducing variability. It is worth emphasizing that the natural environment that matters in relation to people's livelihoods is not the detached ecosystem of geography and natural sciences. People's experience of the environment is almost unfailingly mediated by other people, either directly or in the form of social and institutional interfaces. In value and variability, natural resource management is not the management of stocks of objects, but the management of the relationships that enable certain people to experience certain things as resources. Fertile land is a resource in relation to agriculture. Oil and coal are resources in relation to fossil fuel economies. A drought is not the same experience for those who can move somewhere else and for those who cannot. A flood is not the same experience if your livelihood depends on recession and agriculture or not. In practice, it is usually impossible to isolate climate stresses from the background of non-climate stresses. Valuable opportunities can be small, scattered and short lived. Zavario, you need to unmute yourself. You have muted yourself. When? Oh, I think maybe it was muted when trying to mute the other noise in the background. I don't think I did it. When did you stop hearing me? Just now. An intimate knowledge of the landscape by people and animals down to the morphology of the terrain and its biodiversity at the micro level can make a big difference, but not without the appropriate social and institutional infrastructure. So let me recall the key elements of value and variability. The first one is that where the variability in the natural environment is experienced as an obstacle or as an opportunity for food production depends on the production system. Drylands food systems aim to lower variability in outputs by matching the variability in the natural environment with variability in the processes of production. Finally, opportunities and risk can only be defined from the perspective of the users in the here and now. They cannot be imagined or deduced a priori. There are also two important implications to these three tenets. And the first one is that thriving on variability is possible and indeed the many professions specializing in doing it. Think of air traffic control, finance, international trade or the pharmaceutical industry. The second is that interventions that reduce the variability in the processes of production lead to higher variability in outputs. Although apparently are aimed at reducing variability. African food, African food and agricultural systems are considered hotspots of vulnerability to climate change, and especially so in the drylands. The opposite end of the spectrum resilience to climate change rests on the capacity to shield production from the vagaries of nature by means of high energy inputs and intensive use of resources. The problem with this is that high energy inputs and intensive use of resources to separate production from nature are very much what is raising global average temperature. They are part of the man's against nature approach that has precipitated climate change and that continues to fuel global warming. Mitigate the effects of climate change by continuing to depend on these measures might work locally for some on the short term, but at the cost of keeping the planet on the present trajectory towards catastrophic runaway climate change. The island systems might not appear so resilient at the moment, but the resilience is resting on working with nature rather than against it. Scientists believe that need in the Olo scene changes in the global average temperature have remained within plus or less one degree centigrade. But the latest report by the international panel for climate change of just a few weeks ago says the global warming. You have three minutes remaining. I'm about to finish says that the global warming has reached one plus one centigrade degrees centigrade already and predicts that it will reach one plus five by 2040 in the most optimistic scenario. Plus one plus five 1.5 degrees centigrade. What is the threshold of the Paris agreement is already 50% higher than the record of the last 10,000 years. Beyond this threshold, the risk of triggering a tipping point in natural systems is predicted to increase sharply. So facing this prop prospect, there might be more future in the relative relative vulnerability of working with nature and valuing its variability than in the current resilience based on fighting it. And that's my conclusion. Thank you very much. The last slide shows the pastoralists turn their ability into food white paper that has just been produced by sell it. And, and of course, the pressure in Kenyatta Kenyatta University course on value variability that is in preparation. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much for keeping time. I, I am thinking of what filaments say, pastoral in equals mobility. So how variable are the dry lands. We want to look at a short video as you digest what the very has talked about. This is a very short video of pastoralism is the future. And as the video plays, take time to comment in the chat so that we can come back to some of the issues. And this is a three minute video that will just show us what what is going on and it is by seller. Thank you very much. On about 40% of land on earth rainfall is highly unpredictable where and when crops and pasture will be able to grow can change from one year to the next. Food production systems that depend on predictability struggle to control these natural environments, even with costly investments. This option was never truly sustainable and with global climate change is meeting its limits. But depending on predictability is a choice. It does not need to be that way. Highly variable natural environments actually offer opportunities for food production when producers specialize in being in the right place at the right time. Pastoralists are such producers. They specialize in making sustainable use of highly variable environments to produce food. By managing their animals grazing itineraries to match the changing opportunities in their landscape, they can keep their herds in a relatively stable condition. They track beneficial combinations of forage plants and highest concentrations of nutrients. This keeps their animals on the best possible diet that only a variable landscape can offer. When they have the freedom to move to the right place at the right time, pastoralists make sustainable use of the natural environment and produce organically for domestic markets and export. Conventional food production systems that choose to depend on predictability need to combat variability to control the natural environment. With climate change, the natural environment is becoming even more variable everywhere. This is now our common future. If we learn from pastoralists, environmental variability can become an asset. They are walking the path to sustainable food production systems in the face of climate change. By sustainably turning environmental variability into food, pastoralists are already in the future. Thank you very much. I was expecting to see some comments in the chat regarding the presentation on violent variability. I thank you all. Maybe you are digesting and we'll continue to bring some of these comments later as we move on. I'd like now to introduce our second presenter, Dr Fiona Garaciu, who are allowed to introduce herself and she'll showcase some local strategies and production systems that would ideally be part of integrated into a climate resilient system for violent variability. Welcome Fiona. Thank you very much, Prof. Thank you, Ali, for sharing the slide. So as was mentioned, I will be focusing on illustrating violent variability through various examples. Next slide. So the focus, this is an overview of my presentation. So I will start with various examples with pastoralists and has been mentioned by the chat focusing on mobility as a strategy but looking at the various diverse ways different countries have applied this across different contexts. Then we'll also have some examples around crop farming which does happen in the drylands and the focus will be quite a bit on moisture conservation. Then I'll talk a little bit about how through this breccia project building capacity for sustainable food and water security in the drylands of Africa is integrating violent variability and just a quick conclusion and some useful links. Next slide. So be focusing on about five very quick case studies. First in Wajir in North Eastern Kenya, in Kichui in South Eastern Kenya, in North Kodafan in Sudan, as well as examples in Malawi, Ghana, and Uganda. And in Uganda we'll focus on the Karamoja area. Next slide. And next slide. That's just the map of Karamoja. So first and foremost is in Wajir. And the first example that I am displaying here is mobility linked to water harvesting slash water conservation. And what you can see here in your picture is a water pan which are very common across the dryland areas, especially in the north of Kenya. And this is just a small reservoir that's created by excavating the open ground, as shallow as one meter as deep as about three meters. And it's really used to collect the water, collect and store those surface runoff during the rainy seasons, which can be quite significant, especially with flash flooded, etc. And this is mainly used by the pastoralists to stretch the rainy season and in combination with mobility, so moving from different waterpans to different waterpans. It works with the variability in rainfall and the dynamics between the dry season and the wet season to provide water for their livestock. And you can see there in the picture right in the distance, there's some goats that are getting some water and as well as some households there accessing this particular water. Next slide. The next example, moving from Nigeria into Uganda, country in East Africa, another country is on different aspects of mobility. So you can see a picture there of a pastoralist, you know, coming into new lush landscape with his cattle, and that the different ways that mobility can be used by pastoralists to adapt to variability. So one of the first ways is mobility. We think a lot of times I think of mobility as carrying through the dry season, that's kind of the traditional way we think of mobility that during the dry season pastoralists will move from water point to water point to grazing land to grazing land for their cattle. But this is a bit of a counter argument, but mobility can be used with the kind of variable distribution in different pastures and water in time and space. During the rainy season as a proactive strategy, so not a coping mechanism, but a proactive strategy. So this is where they move from pasture to pasture during the rainy season to get the cattle fed and get them fattened and be able to sell them at the market at the highest price possible. We can also think of mobility in terms of market access. And here we have two examples, one in Niger and one in Uganda. For the Niger example, we have a pastoralist who have really perfected a system that allows them to sell their livestock, move their livestock to different markets and to certain markets at certain times of the year when the prices are the highest and to be able to sell their cattle at those particular markets. Now, once this is done, they're not only selling their cattle, they also need to buy grain foodstuff, etc. They don't necessarily buy them at those same markets. So through technological innovation such as mobile money transfers, they're able to transfer this income earned from the sale of their cattle to other discount markets to buy grain, which is maybe cheaper than the original market where they were selling from, and thereby they can maximize the variability and this variability not only in precipitation but also in trade to their particular advantage. And for the Uganda example, mobility is applied in the Karamoja region to enhance the market access. So mobility in the rainy season supports basically the fattening of the cattle so that they're providing a more valuable commodity and marketing this animal in the various markets. And this is also supported by both technological innovations in the mobile systems and also scouting to track similar to the Niger Niger case study, different locations where the market prices might be best. This is also used to track, for example, where grasses may be salty or where the grazing lands are more secure. And these are all forms of how pastoral mobility can be used in very diverse ways. Next slide. So from Uganda, we move to South Kodafan in South Sudan. And this is a case study of the portable water ladders. So previous assumptions state that, you know, or more traditional ways of thinking of water in the dry lands. State that, you know, water has to be found locally, it has to be fixed, it has to be permanent, it has to be a boho. All those are useful, yes. But in this particular innovation part of the problem in this area was that the settlements around the water points or that kind of access at the water points with large beds and large number of people wanting that particular access was leading to land degradation. So the solution that the innovation that was proposed was that we can use you can see that picture that is a water, a portable water bladder is just that it's unit that can fill up with quite a lot of meters of water and be transported on something as simple as a camel to a truck to the areas where the pastoralists are. So in this way, we are, you know, not basically confining the pastoralists to particular water points and kind of leading to land degradation. But we are matching a variable process, which are the bladders, that's the variable process to the variable input in terms of rainfall slash access to water. And this is what Severe was talking about in his introduction to the concept. Next slide. So that's just what I've discussed before and this is the course that I wanted to read out from the article Standing Wealth 2013 that portable water points such as the water bladders match access to water with selective and transient use of pasture made possible by strategic mobility. Next slide. So we are done with the pastoral examples and we're looking forward to a lot more discussion of these and other examples during the breakout discussion group so keep the chat going and keep these in mind. We're moving now to Kitui in Kenya, a semi arid area where where a lot of agriculture takes place rather than pastoralism and small scale livestock keeping. So on your left there is a picture of road water harvesting, which is one of the innovations that has been used to cope with the variable rainfall in Kitui. I was there in 2019 and during some interviews what I found interesting was when asking the farmers whether rainfall has increased or decreased in the last 10 years quite a significant number of them. We talked about it increasing but over a shorter period of time so leading to flash floods and a lot of waste of water. So this was one of the innovations in terms of digging culverts around the road systems because the road systems are very good with channeling from the higher areas especially when there's high rainfall to the lower lying areas where the farms are. And using this channels and culverts within the farms through water ponds, zypids and channels to conserve that water for farm use and sometimes yes domestic use. And the picture on the right is sand dunes and river wells also in Kitui. And this is an innovation that's used in seasonal rivers in the area these are rivers that flow for about six three to six months during the year. And what is used is the natural sand that's located within the river you can see here at the back the high river bank. And what this is used is during the wet season to channel water into these you see here the lady fetching from the lower area. This is a natural dam or river well, and using very basic tools and not that much money simply labor, they can be able to dig out these wells within the season or rivers and as I said before with a wajir example stretch the rainy season a little bit longer and use that water again for agriculture and in this particular case for domestic use. Next slide. So next example takes us a bit south to Malawi. And this is among agroforestry innovations that I know a lot of us have probably more experience and more detail in and we'll look forward to getting back in the breakout groups. So this is traditional agroforestry using a specific indigenous tree located in Malawi that grows its leaves in the dry season, quite nicely and that provides you know photo for livestock. But in the wet season you can see here it's planted within a maze field. And the leaves actually drop in the wet season, not the dry season and provide mulch and cover for conserving the moisture within the soil and again stretching that water and stretching that rainy season for a better crop within the dry lands. Next slide. The next example is also on soil moisture conservation but this we're going to West Africa and focusing on Ghana. This is a picture my colleague took of a farm in Ghana and you can't really see but if you squint a little bit, you can see that there's stones that have been placed this is a field, an actual field where seeds have been planted. It looks kind of bare and desolate but that's not actually what it is. So those stones do have a purpose and this is called stone bonding. And this is the Thalesi region, Upper East region in Ghana. And what this does is farmers strategically place stones in their fields and these are not boulders or rocks necessarily but small stones that are available within the landscape. And this is really going much more into the micro level than the micro level of soil and water conservation. And what these stones do is direct moisture to from rainfall, for example, to the plants underneath and also provide cover for the moisture conservation and allow the plants to be able to again stretch the rain and be able to use that moisture throughout the rainy season. Next slide. So those are the examples that we had for you today and I know there are many, many more that we can further discuss. And so one of the ways that we are now integrating this concept of value variability within this specific breccia project, as I very, very quickly mentioned is developing curriculums at various levels at Kenyatta University. The first ways we're doing this is by reviewing the current cost offerings that teach or talk about the drylands. For example, at KU, we have an ASAL cost ASAL meaning arid and semi arid lands at the undergraduate level and also similar courses at postgraduate level. So at this undergraduate level, we are really looking at what we teach about the drylands through the lens of value variability to be able to start so to speak right from the beginning with the students who are going to go out there and be able to go to office as policy makers, etc. And currently right now we are also developing a short course specifically targeted at current policy makers to both look at what the current thinking is about around drylands and also try to integrate and internalize this concept of value variability within their work and how they can actually integrated in policy and practice. And as I conclude, I repeat again that this is really more about, sorry, thank you, next slide. This is more about introducing variability in the processes to match the variability in the outputs. And by doing that, we can unlock opportunities again as was talked about in the video and in the various presentation that are inherent already to the existing environmental variability that has been there. This is a very recent phenomenon. This is how communities have been traditionally dealing with it. And going on to my next point that I really needs to start from the local people and opportunities need to be seen at the micro scale as well and not only kind of focusing on the bigger picture macro scale. And I know in the next presentation, my colleague Ahmed will be kind of trying to see how we can, you know, use this variability or embedded within policy. So this slide is just a list of links to literature and as well as the Standing Wealth article that I referenced. Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you very much Fiona and I wish to draw attention also to the link to the seller paper in the chart and also the documentary on green energy, which has been also indicated in the chart. Solomon, thank you. I have seen your question on what are the macro this incentives to investing in variability based systems. We'll come back to that later. And there are many more links that have just been given by Fiona. Dr Fiona Garachu, I had told her to introduce herself and she did not. Dr Fiona Garachu is a research fellow in the Department of Geography Kinata University, working on the Brescia project. So, we want to invite you to another short video as you digest and look at the, think about the examples. Fiona said many of us in this meeting right now have so many other examples that we can share on things that are currently going on being integrated in moving towards a climate resilient dry land. So feel free to also share links and other resources in the chat. So we'll have another short video on the international year of the rangelands, as we think about just the examples that we've looked at. Welcome. Thank you very much. I now would like to invite you to our third presentation. Dr Gilbert I've also taken note of your question and on how will the effects of changing land tenure systems be absorbed by personalism that we shall discuss later, but now I'd like to invite Ahmed Ibrahim, who is the CEO of Aldef to make his presentation. I would also invite him to say something further about himself, but he'll be looking at lessons from implementing the devolved climate finance mechanism in the dry land of Kenya Tanzania Senegal and Mali. Welcome, Ahmed. Thank you very much. As I said, well by Joey, Ahmed in working in the dry lands region, and the Horn of Africa for the last 30 or so years. And across different as a consultant as an employee of the government as a civil servant. We're working with our NGOs and also now localized with the national NGOs, as well as the convener of the asset network recently sees 2019 that's trying to do a dry demand driven approach to dealing with policy and practice in things related to So I'll take you through my presentation for today, and the lessons are set on climate finance mechanisms in Kenya, Tanzania, Senegal and Mali. These programs have really been embedded in legislation institutionalized such that then it works forward to the next level of how devolved climate finance can trickle down from global level, the county and national level, and as well as now some national level. We are further looking at it with the structures going down at ground world level in Kenya, I'll try and explain what that means as we go through the slides. So climate finance mechanism, basically in these five counties is what I'll touch on, which is given in the diagram on the right as how it flows. In Kenya, the DCF mechanism was done under the stack plus, plus stack plus and stack funded by defeat, as well as Cedar and the World Bank, and the adaptation consortium, which is housed under national drought management authority. It contains the consortium contains a number of local partners working at the county levels, which are five counties in Kenya. As well as Kenya material, material ecological department, Christian aid, double ID, and previously included resource advocacy project program as well as UK met office is program run from 2011 in Tanzania. The DCF consortium is chaired by the president's office for regional and local government and was implemented in three districts. Funding ran from 2014 to 2018 was under the Tanzania climate change institutional strengthening program funded and that was followed by an aim for resilience. And partnered with the UN capital development fund local climate adaptive living program to form the local CFI mechanism, which is the climate finance initiative in Mali and Senegal. The DCF project was implemented in the regions of multi in Mali and covering in Senegal. The funding ran from 2015 to 2019 from UK eight under the based program building resilience and adapt adaptation to climate extremes and disasters. And also based X that followed in the consortium was led by me East Foundation with the innovative environment and development and Africa. As you can see now in the diagram on right, the climate change funds and the circles that are in blue, give how the flow of funds happen, which later we'll discuss a little bit around the calf, which is the climate finance fund, which is called the DCF. And how decisions are really made within these structures, which in the end go to investment goods. These are prioritized together with local communities who are elected from a grassroots approach and proposals flow to the local government and administrative and technical sectors, based on the needs and priorities that come from the communities. In essence, the calf has in Kenya, a bit different now, but initially started off with a 90% of the funding going to do the investment and 10% to cover the administrative costs. But in Kenya, through looking at the PFM act, the public finance management act, then it only allows 3% for administrative so 97% goes into investments. Next. So this devolved climate finance mechanisms. Five key principles, which I'd say it from a community led planning model where there are experiences and knowledge and institutions of climate managing climate variability and extremes is maximized on. And we have this anchored in a way that it's supportive and within a devolved system. For example, in Kenya, we are talking about devolution in the 2010 constitution that created 47 sub national level governments, which are called now the devolved units. And that is how it is anchored in. So the approach allows most of the knowledge and experiences that are the decisions where the government institutions working alongside the institutions that are customary and builds and adds on to the existing structures. So this DCF also has a social inclusion of climate marital people and creates structures that that address the power, power balance and dynamics of decision making between the stakeholders that the different levels of the planning system, looking at the DCF where we have the world planning committees, then you have the county planning structures. Each of those different levels have different stakeholders in it. The mechanism also is very flexible and adaptive management is used, because it is responsive to the local realities and changing conditions. So the priorities that come and whatever the knowledge is coming from the communities informs the needs and how the investments are really prioritized with the emphasis on public goods investment. These public goods investments that build on the current production system. Also adaptive systems that adaption systems which the people are using, which account for better community dependency on their common resources, reinforces need and to anchor the community priorities in the existing and high level of government planning. So the components are on the right. So we have the climate change fund. Then we have the climate change planning committees. We have the climate information services and participatory planning tools. And then we have an M&E of resilience building. These are the components which we'll discuss in the next slide. And these four mechanisms are anchored within the CCF mechanism, such that this CCF mechanism has to work within a certain set of operational features in order now to enhance climate resilience in the dry lands. So the key operational features include that the resources that we are talking about, 70% goes to the lowest level, where here in Kenya, for example, we are calling it the world level. So this fund responds to the community priorities and the specificities of the local content. So the key operational features include that the resources that we are talking about 70% goes to the lowest level, where here in Kenya, for example, we are calling it the world level. So this fund responds to the community priorities and the specificities of the local context within the highly assault variable ecosystem. In this instance, what normally happens, which we'll check in how the processes of identifying these priorities really come into being, then 70% of that resources, which we are talking about 97, goes into it. Secondly, it strengthens the community control and choices of the implementation of the investment. So where in the assault context now, the communities identify a certain kind of public good or social services, which now is within the boundaries of where they are, and where the kind of priorities fall across the same for different words than an inter-word process normally happens. And it's more effective and participatory and inclusive kind of planning process where communities prioritize do normal. You have two minutes, Ahmed, you have two minutes. Yes, yes, thank you. So these priorities are normally prioritized and then the communities are able to say if it's water, if it is any kind of other response then the technical departments input. Next slide to the next, please. Next slide. So in this context where there's a lot of other major problems in the land switch, you know, marginalization and routes plus a number of things that is within those kinds of context. We need to really deal with this and how we do it is through an empire kind of approach, which is capacity building, CIS processes, agenda representatives, sanitation of the, of these different level committees, a public goods investment, and then the resilience includes seasonal calendars, resource map, and this really helps to really create that balance that we are looking for. Next slide, please. So you can see as an example, this is Pan, which was talked about by the presenter before me, what really happens in that kind of it is in that kind of state, and after the communities have prioritized the investment, resources have been released through a service provider model, because they cannot directly be given to the community themselves the service provider is monitored, and then it ends in the right end is after you conserved that water, then you're able to get those kinds of water kiosks which the women are able to get clean water. The second one in between is more about using as well the solar systems on the bowels and really helps to be able to deal with climate variability. But in my conclusion to this presentation, there are key things that are that we need to capture. Next slide please. Right now, as we speak, this process started off from a five county, and it's in almost 29 counties, which have established the systems out of the first seven counties in Kenya, with around a confirmed again around seven counties are operational and functional now. However, our first approach will incorporate the learning and address the new challenges experienced in the different counties. An example where this has influenced government in Wajir County where in the election of 2017, the government that was chosen was chosen on a platform that they will be able to come up with world development projects, and they are able to give 750 million of the communities to do that kind of projects and this resulted in close to 300, so far 300 small community projects to climate change. There's also need to value empowering vulnerable communities and the institutions in order to really deal with climate change challenges. The key institutionalization is the key continuity, the key to continuity and sustainability of interventions, beyond the difference pipes, year cycle of government, because governments are selected, are elected every five years. So far, we have a draft World Development Fund bill that has been developed, which now tries to link to the bigger processes in 10 Assel Counties, and the assemblies are going to be deliberating soon. We will also be linked toward development plans alongside disaster management cycle kind of priorities in hospital areas, and then anchored within the planning and budgeting processes which now communities can be able to use these development plans as tools to monitor implementation of their priorities on a yearly basis by government. So thank you very much for that short presentation. Yeah, thank you very much. There's really a lot that we can discuss from that presentation, but I think an important take home message is the community led planning. You know, understanding that the communities themselves have experienced they've lived their lives, they have the institutions the knowledge, and actually recognizing that information. Thank you so much, Hamid, and kindly participants continue to write comments. I've seen a comment there which we may think about later, whether the dry lands are dry gold. And this is something we can think about as we now move into the breakout rooms. I know I've been giving you a video after each presenter. It's not much more exciting because we get to go into small groups and flesh out further what we have been discussing here. So, there will be three groups. And kindly, once you get into the groups you'll get further instructions. Thank you very much continue to write your comments and anything into the chat. Thank you to those who've been contributing. Thank you the presenters as well. Welcome back to the plenary. Somehow, the minutes go very quickly. And before you realize you're just being bumped back into the main room so we thank you so much. The group had very exciting discussions and one participant was describing some interesting aspects of Ethiopia and suddenly we were brought back here. We're happy to be here. And I want to invite us to make presentations of like three minutes from each of the groups. I'll start in the order of group one, group two and three. Just three minutes just some highlights. I know each team was able to get a note taker. This is a position which was hotly contested in our group. Everybody wanted it and we ended up giving someone so I know you have somebody who is ready to present. And kindly, let's hear some reporting back from what you discussed. Yes, I can do it. We had the opposite situation obviously all those ready to volunteer for reporting must have been in your group and Okay, shall I share the screen or Let me share the screen. Yes, you may share the screen. You see it. You see the screen. Yeah, okay, good. I mean, do you see the jumbo. The jumbo screen. Yes. Everything is up. Very good. Okay. Okay, so to the first to the first question. There was a bit of hesitation, but eventually we we decided that overall there hasn't really been enough experience of applications of value and variability to at least within within our group to to make strong strong examples. There was a general appreciation of the of the concept. I made a comment about the possibility of using it with the relation to animal health, taking advantage of a biodiversity. And eventually someone thought that policy method didn't really value the approach enough. With regard to the second to the second question. Again, we thought that was a need for a stronger recognition of pastoralist contribution to food systems. There was some discussion of a vision to end 2030 in Kenya and especially the comment about the fact that although there is a strong emphasis emphasis on variability in the in the in the document. It has been particularly complicated or difficult to then translate that attention into practice. And putting community at the center hasn't been sufficiently operationalized. And someone emphasized the fact that value and variability is like pastoralism is transbanding in nature. On the third question. There should be more support to the concept in that it has a capacity to emphasize community adaptation especially to climate change as an immediate result and the obstacles identified are that there are contradictions in policies land use change and land grab and was an example of the the way pastoralist lost access to significant amount of rangeland in the law in Ethiopia that has now been converted to plantations. So general the general anxiety about the way the trend that is still going on with regard to small scale producers and pastors in particular to lose access to resources and and a question on whether their ability is has a future or not. And at the same time, one could ask whether the alternative approach has a future or not. But that seems to be a question that is more rarely asked, although it should really be on everybody's mind in light of climate change. And that's my conclusion. Thank you. Yeah, thank you very much. Any members from the group you may add additional comments in the chat. So that we move on to group two, because we are having 10 minutes to end of session and would like to listen to everybody. So group two. I think I report back to this is Fiona. And first things first in our group, we talked about how the VV concept would necessarily be something that's easy to understand or for policymakers to integrate. And, you know, understanding of variability really will inform a lot of the kind of development interventions that will happen. And also that from the policymakers perspective, you know, it might be difficult for them to see variability as an opportunity. For example, we see a lot of, you know, programs where it's planting trees, yes, which is good, but cutting down of the indigenous trees. So a lot of inappropriate policies stem from this lack of understanding of the importance of valuing variability in the drylands and another case study was about, you know, index based insurance programs which have a tendency to focus on and so that's one of the issues that we can address quite quickly. So in the next slide, in terms of integrating this into policy and practice, we also discussed that VV really applies in all world contexts not only say in developing contexts, and how we see this being adopted is more from kind of a bottom up approach and a community planning approach. If that is fully integrated, the public participation perspective, that is how you can, one of the ways we can achieve VV in practice. And one of the key issues we discussed here is how do you move beyond valuing variability just being something that's adopted in projects or something that's internalized more widely and that is basically normalized. The same way we normalize this issue of, you know, drylands being scarce drylands not being productive how do we change that narrative and internalize it so it doesn't depend on funding or projects coming in to be able to, you know, achieve what we want to achieve and the other key thing was capacity building is what is going to be important here in terms of adopting this perspective across. I think this is when time was running out. Some of the barriers, of course, are first resistance from, you know, the key policymakers or the gatekeepers who really need to possibly target with this fairly new or new concept or new way of thinking. And also, one question we raised is how, you know, a lot of the donors and governments are really interested in more capital intensive projects kind of show we huge, larger scale projects rather than people and knowledge intensive projects. That's something we need to think about also as we move forward. And finally, there are a lot of issues to consider especially around land and land policy when we're talking about valuing variability in the drylands. And so issues around land tenure and this idea that, you know, land can be used for multiple purposes so if you're having a solar field in the north of Kenya that doesn't mean cattle cannot graze around that area. Thank you. Yeah, thank you very much group two and now we move to group three. Again, any group member with additional comments or clarification just kindly just put it in the chat. Because we have just five minutes remaining group three. Okay, thank you very much. Can you can share your screen. Yes, thank you very much. So on the first question on experiences I think the general consensus was that variability can be harnessed for games either in dry lands or beyond on food security resilience and economic well being in general. There was sharing of experience for example in the United Kingdom where it used to be like all this working with nature before then after world the second world war I became highly mechanized with clearing of large fields production of hedgerows just to provide the spaces for industrial agriculture, but then now there's a movement to actually go back to sustainable system of food production, agroecology organic food production and just working with nature to do that as well. There was concerns around the impact of government large projects investments that are beyond the pastoral's capacity to just value variability. For example, sugar plantations in some of these areas then make it very, very difficult for pastoralists to just practice their pastoral way and mobility as a way of as a livelihood way. We also discussed issues of just the how we've normalized bad ways of living with nature of not valuing the variability anthropocentric ways of lifestyles the species in believing that human beings can continually while exploiting everything else. So variability is viewed as something to be controlled as opposed to something to be exploited. And on the first question, the last thing we talked about the education as a tool, whether in Kenya for example using the CBC to reorient educators and the young generation on just valuing variability. On question two, to what extent we see we see value variability as a perspective adopted in policy and practice in our countries. I think, maybe a good place to start was about an assessment that has been done on the, for example in Kenyon the CID piece, looking at the extent to which food and water security in the asset is presented the CID piece and the assumptions underlying some of the CID piece is that actually we see value variability as a problem and proposed solutions are large scale irrigation reducing livestock mobility, as opposed to looking at how they can take advantage of variability. And there was a plenty of conversations around some of the policy solutions that can be can be can be helpful capacity building of of of county governments for example working with county assemblies, especially with governors and the political goodwill to just normalize the evaluation of variability in some of these counties, working with communities themselves so that they are on the driving seat and the driving seat, involving of young people in schools through clubs for example. Let me see. I think also I think for me it's from a donor perspective how can we also work with donors to just reorient where the investors well probably away from some of this large scale industrial agriculture that undermines the evaluation of variability to to channel some of this resources to more agroecology and the generative ways of food production. On question three, what would be the implications of adopting value variability perspective in policy and practice. I think some of these things have been alluded to already we talked about participatory planning as a critical thing we need to look at. Because the whole challenge of modernization of ecosystems for purposes of production, with assumption of that we will have greater productivity we can, if we can drain in variability itself. So I think the implication is actually we have to have a paradigm shift and be other than what we are currently in terms of production, some challenges and barriers. So in the enabling environment for participatory real work, for example, is huge role to be played by political will and policy frameworks as well as to create those enabling environment. The challenge of political short termism. So for example in Kenya we've just changed the cabinet now so sometimes you build dependency on an individual or a politician and then once they change office or the governor's go and new ones come in. They come scratch out as well. So that's a key barrier. And there was a proposal to how can we make it systemic. So that's not dependent on individuals, but it's dependent on the system itself. And lastly, the challenge of, we're talking about Ethiopia actually where dry lands cover huge geography geographies, some of them with different economic systems, and the challenge there is sometimes what is happening in a different place is completely different from another one. In Ethiopia, I think the colleague was sharing about how they build relationship with politicians to make it mobility of mobility as a system itself as a system of livelihood for pastoralists normalize them within captured within the policy framework and probably some of these lessons we can learn from some of these countries. And then be back by group. Thank you. Thank you so much group three actually it's it's already 8pm, 8pm on the Kenyan and, and I noticed a number of people dropped off perhaps because of that timing. I just want to maybe point out some key issues. One being that violent variability can be a harness that has come out clearly, and that we need some community led planning. To recognize that violent variability is transboundary. And indeed, when we were talking with the Ethiopian colleague, also the Ugandan, all these areas that we call dry lands is one continuous system. And even as we think beyond how to harness it, we need to remember it transboundary. I saw a point from one of the groups about disease outbreaks so any disease would obviously affect all that, all that ecosystem. And of course education as a tool. And I think coming from Kenyatta University, I would say we able to come up with curricula, even at university level short courses, and see how we start influencing by retraining or re enabling them to think about it. I don't know whether given that it is time up whether they will do the question from Philemon. I think that was the only question that looked very complicated. In fact, I had said I would have allowed Philemon to speak. That was the issue of the dry gold, and the issue of lantern I would discuss. So if we have five minutes before we end, it would be good to just hear the thinking behind that question, because remember Philemon you came up with the issue of when you talked about autism equals mobility. And I think that question that you raised was linked to that. But the question, as you can see, is quite deep. Perhaps I'll allow you to unmute and say something about it. You may even have the answer. Well, Prof, I mean, those are some of the, I mean, I got an opportunity to ask a question that has been pondering our minds. I mean, as we, I agree to this myself in the other, like, meet me like group, I work at the International Life Institute. Okay, okay. Yeah, so we have been working on promoting index based lifestyle insurance program in both Kenya and Ethiopia. And we have had several interactions, several groups, stakeholders working in the past four settings. And when you promote a product, for example, a novel idea like insurance, you feel some pushbacks from some quarters, people fail to take it up, though you think that people at the end of the day, they are rational in the sense that you would want to impress a product that actually pushes you from some shots. So it then, like, takes us back to the generic question, well, what are the incentives that are necessary for people to adopt innovations, right? So if you, when we fail to get answers to that, we ask ourselves, so well, what are the disincentives? What discourages people from taking up these innovative ideas, you know? So then, well, we get several answers from and outside our teams, but still we are not yet convinced that we are at a point where we can disentangle the, I mean, understand clearly what would be the entry point for an innovation so that it can be embraced, especially if it has got very clear direct effects and direct benefits to the livelihoods of the people concerned. So that is the background behind the question. And I thought this would be a good opportunity to maybe share to another platform and maybe a group of experts, maybe I will be able to get some sort of feedback. Yes, thank you because I see in future we may also invite you to give a talk on that and the perspectives of where you're working from. So good people, I know it's time up, but thank you so much. I would have liked us to listen to Abdul Kadir from Ethiopia, but those who are in the group already got some points from there. So I would like to bring this to a close and to thank the team that has worked and to thank you for staying to the end. We should be able to provide you the materials that we've used during today. And if you have any further comments, it will be good if you can send them. Thank you for sending you an evaluation, I think, and just so that we can improve in future. Thank you so very much and enjoy your evening, morning, afternoon. I think for the people where I am at, they are rushing to the dining table. Yeah, thank you so much and goodbye.