Climate change poses significant challenges to food production, natural resources management, and public health. Initiatives like ‘Climate-Smart Agriculture” (e.g., FAO, UNDP) and the growing field of ‘Climate Services’ are emerging globally to provide stakeholders (producers, managers, communities) with better climate-related information and solutions to cope with increasing climate variability. The long-term relationships and diverse professional networks cultivated by Cooperative Extension faculty places them in a unique and critical position to help clients and stakeholders sustain and improve food security, ecosystem services, and local health and livelihoods in the face of climate change. The intent of the CNMI Extension Climate Forum was to engage Cooperative Extension faculty, natural resource managers, agriculturalists and fishers in critical dialogue about the impacts of climate change on agriculture and natural resources in CNMI and the potential opportunities to integrate climate adaptation and mitigation into extension programming. The two-day event was in response to capacity building needs identified by Hawaii and Pacific Island participants at the SW Extension Climate Change Conference held December 2016 in Tucson, Arizona funded by a USDA-NIFA grant and the USDA Climate Hubs.
The central aims of the forum were to:1. Develop foundational knowledge of regional climate change science2. Identify locally relevant strategies for climate adaptation and communication3. Incorporate climate-related information and tools into CES programs
