Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics Innovation Lab for Food Security Policy, Research, Capacity and Influence

The Comprehensive Action for Climate Change Initiative (CACCI), a buy-in of the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Policy Research, Capacity, and Influence (PRCI), continues to build global momentum as it expands beyond the original partnership with the African Union Commission (AUC). Originally named ‘Comprehensive African Climate Change Initiative’ it now includes Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. At the 27^th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27), Samantha Power, Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) announced the global expansion of the initiative.

CACCI is a joint climate initiative with regional and country level stakeholders to provide support to partner country governments to implement policies and programmatic investments; strengthen national, regional, and local capacity to meet Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) targets and develop National Adaptation Plans (NAPs); and provide broader climate and environmental policy support. Since COP26, CACCI has initiated activities in 12 countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America.

The global launch of CACCI at COP27 

While CACCI was launched at COP26 as the Comprehensive Africa Climate Change Initiative, CACCI has since expanded in scope to provide broad climate and environmental policy support across the globe. The CACCI mission is to contribute to USAID’s climate change strategy to align development in humanitarian assistance programs with NCDs, NAPs, and partner country climate policy priorities. CACCI plans to accomplish this goal in at least 80 countries by 2030.

At COP 27 in the NDC Partnership Pavilion CACCI was launched globally. USAID Administrator Samantha Power announced the global expansion of the Comprehensive Action for Climate Change Initiative to support USAID efforts to provide technical assistance to countries in support of their climate goals. This assistance will complement USAID’s ongoing work with partner countries to transition to renewable energy, conserve forests and lands, and prepare for climate impacts.

CACCI Side Events at COP 27

CACCI was also featured in several side events at COP 27. CACCI-Africa is led by ANAPRI (formerly ReNAPRI) and AKADEMIYA2063 and was represented at the Zambia Pavilion by Antony Chapoto, ANAPRI Technical Chair and Research and Outreach Director, Indaba Agricultural Policy Research Institute (IAPRI) moderated the panel “Comprehensive Africa Climate Change Initiative: Supporting the implementation of NAPs and NDCs in Africa” CACCI-Africa shared lessons learned from implementation of NDCs and NAPs in four pilot countries: Ghana, Rwanda, Senegal, and Zambia. CACCI objectives to complement and assist with governmental and NGO programs were emphasized as helpful by stakeholders and collaborative implementation with local technical partners to support data and data analytics was shared as one of the benefits of the initial CACCI implementation.

CACCI-Asia was represented at COP-27 by Suresh Babu, PRCI Asia Lead and Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). At the Tajikistan Pavilion in partnership with USAID and the Committee for Environmental Protection under the Government of the Republic of Tajikistan, Babu shared a presentation on “South and Southeast Asia Perspective: Launching of CACCI-Asia.” The presentation highlighted the CACCI approach in Tajikistan and how it could be leveraged in other South Asian countries to support NDC Secretariats in key activities for NDC implementation. The launch of CACCI-LAC was hosted by the Home of Sustainable Agriculture of the Americas Pavilion, by USAID and the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture with other partners.

Beyond COP27

CACCI-Senegal was launched on October 17^th by AKADEMIYA2063 in partnership with Centre de Suivi Écologique (CSE-Center for Ecological Monitoring). In Rwanda, CACCI partner institution, AKADEMIYA2063, continued to build relationships with governmental bodies to define operational procedures and agreements. AKADEMIYA2063 will be working closely with the Rwanda Environmental Management Agency (REMA) and has signed an MOE with REMA as well as the Rwandan Ministry of Environment (MOE). Stocktaking of the policy environment and key stakeholders continues and the development of a data capturing tool for socioeconomic indicators will begin soon, as well as trainings on data collection, estimation, and reporting for emission, land use, and socioeconomic indicators.

CACCI partnering institution ANAPRI is working within Zambia and Ghana to build partnerships with local organizations and develop gap analysis reports as well as policy, regulation, and investment stocktaking exercises. Zambia was the initial pilot country as was announced at COP 26. This summer CACCI-Zambia launched in collaboration with the Zambian Inter-Ministerial Working Group. ANAPRI member, Institute of Statistical Social and Economic Research (ISSER), began discussions with local stakeholders surrounding the country implementation plan for SDGs and NDCs.

Stocktaking and initial assessments continue in Tajikistan which is the first Asian country to partner with CACCI. In October, CACCI-Asia increased networking and outreach efforts in Southeast Asia through establishing connections with key focal points in Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. Presentations on the CACCI approach have taken place with stakeholders and PRCI country partners in Nepal and India.

Looking forward for CACCI

In the new year, the official launch of CACCI-Rwanda will take place on January 12 led by AKADEMIYA2063 in partnership with REMA and MOE. The African Growth and Development Policy (AGRODEP) Modeling Consortium led by AKADEMIYA2063 will contribute technical capacity to access and analyze climate and socioeconomic data. CACCI will continue to expand work in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean to assist governments and local organizations and institutions to make empirically based policy decisions to adapt to and mitigate climate change.