Helping farmers improve their agricultural yield

Kwabena Asante is a lucky man: his profession is also his passion. An expert in the field of water resources, climate extremes, global information systems and project management, it is his dream that farmers around the world will one day be able to turn on their computers to access climate data related to their crops and make informed farming decisions based on this information. Asante is convinced that it is only a matter of time: "This is a revolution that is bound to happen," he says.

Our meeting took place in the strangest of places - airborne on a flight from Chennai to Dubai. En route to California after visiting his wife's family in Chennai, what started as an informal conversation with a fellow passenger turned into one of the most informative interviews I have ever taken.

A consultant in climate risk management, Asante has spearheaded the development of a climate database and online portal containing data for more than three million locations around the world. The site provides information on climate changes, including statistics that go back almost 10 years. "I launched my company Climatus to harness the power of modern technology in the service of humanity and the environment," he says. "In a world of competing social and environmental forces, a partial view of our ecosystem is no longer adequate. At Climatus, we strive to use modern technology to offer people a holistic understanding of their changing climate. Our premise is that the search for a happy balance between the natural and built environments can only be led by informed people."

Climatus is supported by a growing network of independent professionals from diverse backgrounds in the environmental, social and computational sciences. "Our independent professionals are located on every continent. They combine their own training and experience with our data, computational and analytical resources to serve the needs of clients in their neighbourhood. We also work with individual consultants and business affiliates to implement projects around the world."

Thirty-nine-year-old Asante's interest in water-studies was largely influenced by his early experience of two climatic extremes, from lush forest lands to dry deserts. Having grown up in the tropical region of Ghana until he was nine, his family's move to Sudan in 1980 proved an education of sorts. "Living in a highly water-stressed region, I saw both the effect of having water, as well the consequences of having a lack of it. The civil war that was fought over water resources and the subsequent conflicts over water forced us to leave Sudan in 1983 and migrate to Kenya. I have, therefore, experienced at first hand how water affects livelihood and people's outlook on life. I have seen too many of these droughts, which cause extreme human suffering. Additionally, I was exposed to the gravity of the water scarcity situation in my early research work."

Creating better climate models

While working towards a doctorate in environmental and water resource engineering between 1995 and 2000 at the University of Texas, Asante's research on "continental scale river flow routing", led to the improved representation of water flow in climate models. As a research assistant, he was responsible for conducting hydraulic engineering laboratory sessions, and offering instruction on hydraulic modelling software. His work experience in the Middle East and Africa region also happened during this period, when he was appointed to serve as an instructor for short-term training courses in Tanzania and Egypt.

"In 1997, I was part of a workshop that was organised by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in collaboration with the Egypt-based Centre for Environmental Development in the Arab Region and Europe (CEDARE). My professor, Dr David Maidment, and I taught a course on the use of water resources and geographical information systems to representatives of the water sector from pretty much every country in the Arab region. So my very first exposure to international work was in the Arab region."

In his subsequent role as senior scientist at the US Geological Survey (USGS) in South Dakota, Asante worked on the implementation of natural hazard warning systems for floods, droughts and cyclones in partnership with federal, regional and local stakeholders.

"We monitored extreme weather events that damaged crops, infrastructure and resulted in loss of life in communities around the world. Through our study of the data, we saw some interesting trends emerging. In many regions, erratic weather conditions are leading to increasing crop losses. Farmers who have access to climate information are able to better manage their climate-related risk by changing the sowing period or the seed varieties that they use and the number of acres they plant each year. By contrast, poorer farmers in Africa, Central America and Asia seem to be caught by surprise every year by changing weather patterns and keep hoping for better weather the following year."

The impact of this lack of information, he believes, can be economically devastating. He offers a disturbing statistic. "A recent human rights report suggests that one Indian farmer commits suicide every 30 minutes because of excessive debt brought on by successive crop failures."

It was during his stint with the US Geological Survey that Asante also participated in some ground-breaking work. "The USGS works with countries all over the world to monitor changes in the environmental systems. We worked with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to produce an atlas that captured the way our world has changed. Titled One Planet Many People: Atlas of Our Changing Environment, it presents a collection of satellite images and for the first time visually documents the extent of human and climatic influences on the dimensions of our rivers, lakes, forests, deserts and urban centres around the world. It became the biggest selling publication by the UN Environment Programme of all time."

Access to information

It was while working on the atlas that Asante met his Indian wife, Shalini Venkataraman, who was a visiting scientist with the USGS Center for Earth Resources Observation and Science, developing web-based mapping and visualisation tools for geoscience applications.

It was also during this time that the necessity of offering communities easy and direct access to information on local changes in climate became even more imperative to Kwabena. "Previously, communities relied on their knowledge of local climate and landscape to plan their farming and economic activities. For example, the pastoral communities living near the Ethiopia-Kenya border are familiar with a large expanse of the terrain and know the positions of watering holes. They migrate between these holes using their sense to gauge the right time and know when and where to move to have an adequate supply of water and pasture for their animals. Besides their knowledge and understanding of the landscape, they may rely on local scouts to go in search of water resources."

However, in the recent past, the region has either witnessed periods of extreme drought that make it difficult to find water or extremely heavy rainfall, which prevents them from crossing rivers that they usually wade through, eventually trapping them in certain areas. Little wonder then that it is becoming more and more difficult for scouts to know where to move next. "This crystallised the fact that we can no longer rely on our indigenous knowledge systems to predict what the next year is going to look like since climate is changing drastically and, in fact, very rapidly. This gap that I perceived for individuals to gain access to information also impacts city dwellers. For example, if I were to ask someone off the street how climate change is affecting his city, the chances are he would either be unaware of the answer or wouldn't know where to find the information to answer that question for his local environment."

The need to establish an online source where any person could find information about his particular locality to study and understand long-term changes was the fundamental idea behind the creation of Climatus, says Asante.

Set up in 2008, Climatus collects data from various research centres around the world and re-processes the data into standard formats to make it possible for users to retrieve climate information about any location using simple web browsers. The data is also being used to calculate applied information such as changes in optimal planting time, changes in the amount of water required to grow a crop locally, the risk of crop failure or changes in frequency of flooding. As a core objective, Climatus hopes to provide society with adequate information to deal with the impacts of population expansion, erratic climate changes, and the shifting dynamics of our water resources.

Apart from farmers who heavily rely on climatic information to discern the right time to optimise their production, another major consumer of climate information is the insurance industry, which seeks to know how its risks are changing over time.

The portal is open and offers information free of charge. "Our sole source of revenue is the clients that commission us to conduct a specific study," says Asante. "We initially developed the portal as a proof of our concept. We then shortlisted relevant companies and approached them for consulting opportunities. The money we gained from these consultations is re-invested into developing the portal."

Championing local causes

From the body of work that he has carried out for clients in southern Africa, Mozambique, Swaziland, South Africa and the US, Kwabena believes there is too much negative information out there about the nature of climate change and the risks it poses. "Climate change is not a totally bleak picture. For instance, areas like deserts can transform into greener regions due to climate change, while a longer hotter season in some parts would mean a longer growing season in the winter. Other regions will have increased rainfall due to the warmer climate. To take advantage of these opportunities, the first step is to recognise them as opportunities and put in the infrastructure to harness them. I really would like to see more people interested and recognising the potential to develop them."

He cites the example of communities living in the Niger basin that were unproductive a few years ago but are now exporting large amounts of agricultural produce to other parts of Africa, thanks to their knowledge of climate change. "I can't help but be optimistic that we will find a way. Satellite data is giving us consistent ways to compare water resources changes in different parts of the world. The most interesting work is using the information to find new ways to optimise our water use or to find new markets for what we grow. Remember, reduction in production in one area creates a new market opportunity for another person to replace the lost production."

Kwabena believes the Arab region is going to be one of the more interesting regions for study with its extremes of water scarcity, temperature, long droughts, and the relatively new risk of increased flooding.

He feels it is an exciting time now because countries can take stock of what they have done in the past, as well as recognise what the future may hold for them in terms of the climate and how they can make use of those emerging technologies to their advantage.

For Kwabena, Climatus is also about championing a social cause and running a business that delivers a social good. "Initially, it was not clear to me if we were going to be successful as it is difficult to balance the social and economic objective. However, it is becoming clear to me that we can succeed on the social level, which for me is the first and perhaps more important objective. I think that if individuals are empowered, if information is available at the right time and facilitates a decision that helps them avoid the worst of the disaster, it is vastly better than providing assistance after the disaster."

Impacting lives

What experience in Asante's life led him to channel all of his energies into championing an issue of such global concern? In answer to this question, Asante tells me a story: "My grandmother, Nana Adiase, has lived in a small farming community in Ghana called Jamasi throughout her lifetime, and I have seen how her life improved with innovation over time. The first step was the introduction of electricity in the early 1990s, and then in 2001, she had a tap in the house that she could open and get water from. It is difficult to explain to her what global climate change is but she could directly benefit from knowing that planting her yams two weeks earlier than before could improve her yields.

"Much of the inspiration to create a portal like Climatus comes from the need I feel to innovate and impact the lives of people just like my Nana Adiase."