Page 81 - Ecuador's Banana Sector under Climate Change

chapter 4: assessment of climate change impact on banana production and suitability in ecuador, and general assessment of global banana trends under climate change scenarios
Instituto Nacional Autónomo de Investigaciones Agropecuarias (INIAP)
and the Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement (CIRAD). The analysis will cover present and future projections, using the global circulation models for the years 2030, 2050, and 2075.
ii. An estimation of the indicators and identification of types of climate variability in terms of moderate variability and extreme events (rainfall, drought, heat waves and cold snaps) for the main banana and plantain growing areas of Ecuador. The analysis will apply Worldclim and historical weather data from three weather stations in banana zones and their related upper watersheds within Ecuador that are the source of irrigation water.
iii. The documentation relating to focal group discussions with banana growers and technicians in select key production areas relating to the effects of moderate and extreme weather events on banana productivity and the identification of management strategies; prevention of additional costs; and the recovery from these effects.
iv. A review of the disruptive effects of moderate and extreme climate events in Ecuador on the volume of exported bananas, using historical data.
2. Projected impact of climate change and weather variability on the levels of productivity and disease
To address the impact of climate change and weather variability on the levels of Ecuador’s banana production and disease, an identification of the production areas was made. These were classified into agroclimatic zones, based on banana-specific parametres. Average climate changes were projected for the zones and for six representative sites. These projections provided the basis
to study the changes in the areas relating to suitability, climate change links to disease severity and upper watershed effects.
2.1 Export banana production areas of Ecuador
Banana growing areas cover nearly 210 000 hectares and are concentrated principally in the coastal provinces of Guayas, Los Ríos and El Oro. These provinces represent approximately 91 percent of the production area and 89 percent of the growers (AEBE, 2014) (Figure 16). Additional production is found in the Sierra in the lower altitudes of the provinces of Cañar (3.8 percent of national banana production), Bolívar (1.8 percent), Pichincha, Santo Domingo de los Tsachilas (1.4 percent) and Loja (0.8 percent). Much smaller areas are located
in other provinces. Yields are influenced by management practices and inputs, the size of the farm and production characteristics, such as soils, and climatic factors.
To classify the areas that meet a range of suitability criteria for banana production throughout Ecuador, a spatial modeling procedure was developed and implemented in ArcGIS (ESRI Inc.), using the ESRI Model Builder. Environmental and other global geospatial datasets that were used for the global classification analysis include:
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