Supporting food security with multi-annual climate information: Co-production of climate services for the Southern African Development Community

Abstract

Climate variability and change poses unprecedented challenges to food security, with shifting temperature trends, altered precipitation regimes, and the intensification of extreme events such as heatwaves, droughts, and floods. Multi-annual climate variability further exacerbates these challenges, underscoring the need for decision-makers to access actionable climate information to inform long-term adaptation strategies. However, multi-annual predictions remain constrained by their modest forecast skill and considerable uncertainty, limiting their use in decision-making. This study presents the co-production of climate services using multi-annual predictions to enhance food security in Tanzania and Malawi, developed as part of the EU-funded H2020 project FOCUS-Africa. These services are based on an interactive online platform to deliver deterministic and probabilistic predictions of key variables, including mean temperature, precipitation, temperature extremes, and drought conditions for the coming years. To ensure transparency, forecast quality metrics are provided to guide users in assessing the quality and reliability of the climate information. Complementary co-designed bulletins summarize these predictions in accessible language, fostering engagement and practical application through in-person workshops and feedback sessions. This paper demonstrates how co-production can help address the emerging demand for climate information to support food security decisions at multi-annual timescale. Our findings highlight the effectiveness of stakeholder engagement in tailoring climate services to user needs. This study also identifies critical challenges in the co-production process and outlines strategies to overcome them, offering valuable insights for advancing climate services for supporting multi-annual decisions in other sectors and contexts.