Climate services for resilience: the changing roles of NGOs in Burkina Faso

The growing focus on resilience in the context of climate change and international development has led to a push for more integrated approaches to planning for and responding to climate change, managing disaster risk, and addressing broader development challenges. Included in this move is an increased emphasis on the use of climate and weather information in decision-making. Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) across Africa and Asia have responded accordingly, and are increasingly acting as brokers, and sometimes producers, of climate information services as part of their “resilience building” programmes.

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 services system in Burkina Faso. It examines when, and how, the emergence of resilience programming has affected programme activities and practices in the country, using the 2001- 2002 as a baseline for comparison. The study approaches climate services as a value chain, looking systemically at the range of entry points where NGO engagement has had an impact.