Climate Risk and Early Warning Systems Initiative – Facing drought risk in Burkina Faso with better risk warning and anticipation

Since January 2017, the CREWS project in Burkina Faso has helped 100,000 small-scale rural farmers in Burkina Faso to access advanced agrometeorological advisories. The objective is to adjust their farming practices in order to optimize field cropping calendars. More than one million people across Burkina Faso’s northern region are now benefiting directly and indirectly from the initiative, improving their lives and livelihoods. Key partners in this initiative include the Burkina Faso National Meteorological Service, the World Bank and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

The InsuResilience Global Partnership and CREWS Initiative are closely interlinked. Both were launched in 2015 (the InsuResilience G7 initiative at the G7 Summit in Elmau, CREWS at COP21 in Paris, France) as part of the climate action agenda, contributing to resilience, and more specifically to protecting lives and livelihoods. Both advocate for preparedness, improved forecasting and informed decision-making, as demonstrated in this project and other project work. CREWS supports risk reduction and preparedness through a focus on early warning systems, while InsuResilience supports financial protection through a focus on climate and disaster risk-finance and insurance solutions within a framework of comprehensive risk management. Both are based on a core set of enhanced risk knowledge and contribute to risk management.