On December 10, the MRR Innovation Lab co-led a session at Resilience Hub at COP28 in Dubai. The event was entitled “Supporting Innovation to Build Food System Resilience Across Landscapes and Waterscapes.” Speakers included:

• Dina Esposito, Assistant to the Administrator, USAID
• Nobel Prize Laureate Michael Kremer, University of Chicago
• World Food Prize Laureate Shakuntala Thilsted, CGIAR/WorldFish
• Michael Carter / Sophie Javers, MRR Innovation Lab, University of California, Davis
• Keivan Hamoud, Administrative Director at the Association of Agroextractivists of Beruri, Brazil

MRR Innovation Lab’s presentation argued that one-off innovations do not achieve nearly the resilience impact of the thoughtful combination of multiple interventions. We featured an MRR study in Mozambique and Tanzania, where our researchers introduced a package of genetic innovation (drought tolerant seeds) and financial innovation (index insurance) to farmers. As the seeds work in moderate drought, insurance was complementary in offering coverage for extreme conditions like drought. Together, they provided a broad range of coverage that encouraged farmers to intensify investment in their production—the Resilience+ phenomenon.  

Key messages from other speakers included:

• Improved weather forecasts hold significant potential to improve the resilience of food production, with attractive cost-benefit propositions.
• Aquatic food systems hold significant capacity to nourish people, often with lower environmental costs to the planet than land-based methods of food production.
• Actors should seek not only to add value to agricultural products and processes, but also to strengthen the socioeconomic development of indigenous communities and the preservation of the environment in climate vulnerable regions.

The recording of the event is available here.