Climate services for resilience: the changing roles of NGOs in Ethiopia

The current and expected impacts of climate change are influencing government policies and services as well as donor and NGO activities. The shifts have been influenced by the ‘resilience agenda’ whereby actors seek to reduce vulnerability and strengthen resilience as a means to mitigate climatic challenges. A focus on resilience has required a much more diverse engagement, as the interrelationships between climate, health, poverty and wellbeing are increasingly recognized. This has made programming more complex. Within these changes, climate information services have received greater emphasis. Forecasting has supported the strengthening of emergency response programming, and early warning data is used to adjust safety net implementation. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) across Africa and Asia have responded accordingly, and diversified their partnerships and activities within climate information services.

To enrich our understanding of these trends, this study traces the emergence of climate services as a core element of resilience programming and explores how development NGOs are contributing to the climate information services system in Ethiopia. It examines when, and how, the emergence of resilience programming has affected programme partnerships and activities in the country, tracing the high-level changes that have occurred since 2002. The study approaches climate information services as a value chain, looking systemically at the range of entry points where NGO engagement has had an impact.