Government officials successfully produced the first R-based Seasonal Impact and Vulnerability Assessment (rSIVAL) bulletin
Recently the SAMIS project started a collaboration with the global FAO project Country support to the enhancement of the Nationally Determined Contribution in the AFOLU sector - Technical Assistance Fund (TAF), on behalf of the NDC Partnership Climate Action Enhancement Package, also know as CAEP project
Through the Climate Action Enhancement Package (abbreviated CAEP, pronounced "cap") the NDC Partnership is delivering targeted, fast-track support to countries to enhance the quality, increase the ambition, and implement nationally determined contributions (or NDCs). The FAO project, whose symbol is MTF/GLO/168/WRI, targets Albania, Benin, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Colombia, Cote d'Ivoire, Ecuador, Eswatini, Gabon, Mongolia, Mozambique, Niger, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Tajikistan, Zimbabwe, and Lao PDR.
The activity under development in Lao PDR are managed by the Department of Climate Change (DCC) of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and include training of national level experts related to hands-on Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) activities. Modelling capacities are being improved to develop a seasonal forecast drought index that can regularly produce monthly maps of drought risk.
In this framework colleagues from the Departments of Meteorology and Hydrology and from the Department of Climate Change successfully produced independently the first bulletins using the r-SIVAL script produced by the CAEP project during the months of May and June. The CAEP project will produce the seasonal forecast bulletin regularly and it will be piloted in four villages every month over the rainy season. Unfortunately, at the moment missions are not possible to the lockdown situation.