Egypt: Stories from the Field
More than 90% of Egypt is desert and the agricultural land base totals about 3.5 million hectares — just 3.5% of the total land area. The project “Building resilient food security systems to benefit the Southern Egypt region”takes an integrated approach to adaptation and it has engaged stakeholders across the country.
Among its components, it builds adaptive capacity at national and community levels to provide food-insecure people with the knowledge, skills and tools to build their own climate resilience. It also offers training to key groups, and established climate information centers in each village.
Close collaboration has helped ensure learning and replication of best practices and skills development. It has also promoted adoption of new techniques, as well as rescheduling of irrigation, use of heat-tolerant crop varieties and changing of sowing dates in wheat production.
Through the “Building resilient food security systems to benefit the Southern Egypt region” project, communities now plan the type of crops and the sowing and harvesting periods based on climate information. Early adopters and opinion formers were the first to share their success stories with other community members, thus leading to scale-up and replication of activities and ideas.
The project requires changing centuries-old customs and livelihoods. As part of this process, the project has incorporated local cultures, traditions and norms to communicate messages about climate change adaptation.