Digital Climate Advisory Services (DCAS) for smallholder resilience

WBCSD’s work with Digital Climate Advisory Services (DCAS) is part of the Scaling Positive Agriculture project. DCAS are climate-related advisories and services delivered via digital tools and platforms. These include online portals, mobile applications, more traditional, digitally enabled formats like radio and interactive voice response systems. A growing market of DCAS solutions is emerging to help farmers build resilience and adapt to climate change.

These services offer a huge opportunity to increase the productivity and resilience of smallholders and support sustainable food systems.  Greater investment is needed in DCAS to meet the needs of around 300 million smallholders globally, especially in geographies with higher vulnerability to climate shocks. This must be driven by the needs of users- and enabling conditions to help ensure access and affordability. 

This short interim report draws on the finding of the Investment Blueprint working group on financial sustainability and public-private partnerships, led by WBCSD.  The report highlights opportunities for the private sector in DCAS, including how to implement financially sustainable business models and recommendations for business. 

WBCSD partnered with the Global Commission on Adaptation, the International Research Institute for Climate and Society, the World Food Program and the World Resources Institute in 2020 to address some of these challenges, and to develop an Investment Blueprint for DCAS to reach 300 million smallholder farmers, due to publish in Spring 2021.