The workshop will take place on Monday, February 27 at the University of Cape Town, in Cape Town, South Africa. It is organized in coordination with the fifth International Conference on Climate Services and to contribute to the Climate Information Services Research Initiative, a part of the USAID-funded I.LEARN.CIS project.

This workshop is being held in conjunction with the USAID I.LEARN.CIS project, with the goal of reviewing recent work to evaluate climate services in Africa.

Key evidence-related questions that are important to the climate services community include: (a) To what extent do farmers and other agricultural decision-makers access and use climate services to change their decisions? (b) How do the uses of climate services impact farmers’ livelihoods and agriculture-related development goals? (c) How do aspects of climate service design and implementation influence access, use and effectiveness (in terms of livelihood and development impact) of climate services?

The workshop will present a range of commonly used methodologies (controlled and post-hoc survey methods, econometric, willingness-to-pay, decision modeling, combined methods), and highlight the relative strengths and weaknesses of applying these methods to answer different questions in different contexts.

The workshop will also provide an opportunity to identify and prioritize critical gaps in current activities, laying the groundwork for the development of a shared Learning Agenda on Climate Information Services in sub-Saharan Africa.

The workshop will:

• REVIEW existing work to evaluate access, use, and effectiveness of climate services in Africa.

• IDENTIFY gaps and opportunities in the creation of evidence regarding climate services, and the methodologies that are used to create that knowledge.

• PRIORITIZE next steps in the development of a learning research agenda for the evaluation of climate services in Africa.

Climate Services Evaluation — Methodological Review Workshop

www.climate-services.org/iccs/iccs5

To register, please contact cvaughan@iri.columbia.edu by February 20.