Animal Health Under a Worsening Climate Crisis | ILRI & WorldFish Webinar

Welcome everyone. Uh ging from Nasha Kenya where I'm sitting here with some of the colleague. Uh we are very happy to be here today uh to run the webinar uh animal health under a worsening climate crisis. Uh I I would like to introduce myself. Uh my name is Hungu. I'm working for ENRI International Livestock Research Institute as regional director for ENRI in Asia and I'm very pleased to be moderating our session today. Uh actually uh this webinar uh will share the findings from a DEFRA funded uh project and that project was jointly led by our own institution in together with our CJ sister centerfish to examine how climate change is impacting the livestock and fish diseases in Africa in general with a special focus on three country namely Ghana, Zambia, but also Kenya. Uh the work will also sit within the CGI SAF sustainable animal and aquatic foods science program and under that saf program I'm actually leading the onehell program what we call in our CJ terms onehell area of work. So that's why I would like also to acknowledge the broader CJ staff support alongside with DFRA and also the Bonmo group as we get started uh now in this webinar. uh I would like to to say that you know we will spend one and a half hour together and uh within this uh time uh I will have also assistance from my colleague Joffrey who actually is following the chat uh for Q&A and and also logistic link to uh this webinar. So if you have anything any questions so please feel free to put in the Q&A chat but also directly in the chat box. Um and I would like to also summarize quickly uh the program we are having today. Uh after uh this uh logistic information session uh we will have an opening remark from the DDG of INRE followed by the key presentation on the result of the project by different colleagues from ENRE and WFish and afterwards we will have a a panel discussion bringing our national partners to discuss the result of this projects and of course you are attending uh this seminar. you are very welcome to ask questions and we will have some time at the end to uh actually uh uh interact with you from this audience uh related to our talks and Q&A and so on and of course you know my DDG will come back to close uh the webinar. So with that um I'm very happy to invite now uh Dr. Bony Moyo. Uh Bon is the deputy director general DDG research impact and partnership of ENRI to give an official opening remark. Uh Bon is Floyd Z. >> Um thank you very much moderator. Um good morning good afternoon colleagues and all the participants uh wherever you joining from. I bring you greetings from the International Livestock Research Institute based in Nairobi, Kenya. Today it gives me great pleasure to welcome you all to this timely webinar entitled animal help under worning climate crisis. This has been convened by a team from the international livestock research institute Illyri and the world fish that has been implementing this project on climate change and animal health. This was funded jointly by DEFRA and the Balma Fund at the Livestock Climate Solutions Hub here at Il Nairobi. I'm really pleased to see that the project has successfully completed all the task that it was meant to address. Before I make my um brief remarks, I would like to sincerely thank all the partners who made this work possible. And these include the director Zambia's department of fraternal services, the directorate and the director from Ghana's department of eternal services, colleagues from the University of Ghana, University of Nairobi and JO Kenyata University of Agriculture and Technology, Welfish and IL and also DERA from the United Kingdom. The CGR recognizes the central role that livestock systems play in human nutrition, in poverty reduction, and global security. Climate change is an existential threat that threatens to disrupt gains made towards the realization of these outcomes. Assessments by the World Materological Organization indicate that the world is approaching a period in which warming above 1.5° C may become increasingly persistent. So what does this mean? Across the region, climate change is already transforming livestock and aquaculture production systems and altering the distribution and transmission of animal diseases, including zunosis. Communities that derive their livelihoods from these production systems are already incurring heavy losses. I'm sure we've seen quite a lot in the media whenever there's a drought or flooding from climate change in juice production uh losses. Yet their contributions to these changes are negligible in some instances. The study applied to the intergovernmental panel on climate change IPCC risk and vulnerability framework. This framework integrates hazard exposure and vulnerability analysis to assess how much how climate change may alter animal health risks in Ghana and Zambia. These were the focus countries for this initial study. Opportunistic analysis were also carried out in Kenya building on studies that had been done earlier on on livestock. Some of the elements of the work that stood up for me and the team include the following. First, the multidisiplinary collaboration. This project fostered strong and productive partnerships between ILR wellish and the other participating institutions, the universities and the department of maternal services that I mentioned earlier. This collaboration should be sustained beyond the life of the project as partnerships within the CGR are essential for addressing complex and multidisciplinary challenges such as those examined in this work. Number two, multi-country multi-isease focus. The use of multi- countries in a research project helped us identify shared regional patterns while at the same time revealing how differences in climate, ecology, livestock systems, infrastructure and access to health services shape disease risk and vulnerability in the different countries and regions. Similarly, studying several diseases also helps to broaden conclusions since climate change may cause some diseases to expand, others to shift geographically and others to decline. So the third observation was on relating to research translation. I'm pleased that the project has identified and prioritized adaptation measures that can be developed further to help communities manage the impacts of climate change beyond pharmaceutical interventions such as vaccination. Greater attention is therefore needed to change the risky practices and perceptions that increase farmers exposure to disease through participatory research. I'm sure uh colleagues that we are all eager to listen to the presentations and panel discussions that are are lined up for this afternoon. I encourage everyone to engage actively share your experiences and reflect on how the evidence and recommendations presented here today can be translated into practical action. I therefore look look forward to a stimulating webinar together and productive discussions. I wish everyone a successful session and thank you very much. So I hand you back to the moderator Kong over to you. Thank you very much uh DDG Bonoyo for the very nice opening remark and I have to say also that you know thank you very much for the kind support to research group promoting this topic within the CGI because that is very important area that uh uh we need to strengthen uh in terms of climate change and health uh at CGI that we are working uh very closely with different national partners. uh now let uh move to the next uh series of uh presentation. You know I see in the charts that some colleagues asked for uh screen share or power point but actually DG bony didn't use any slide for her opening remark and now I would like to invite uh uh uh Joffrey to give the first slide on the framework that Modi mentioned and I can say a few word about that uh framework. I don't know who is sharing the slide. Okay. So, so let me continue uh as the slide is coming. Uh uh colleagues and and friend actually this project uh as our DDG mentioned is very much taking uh care of the risk assessment framework of IPCC and me as someone who have worked for long on risk assessment risk analysis framework. I feel a little bit different between uh the framework of risk assessment between IPCC and the one we work with uh uh uh food safety in uh Indry and other CG uh centers. And uh please take note that most of the analyszis and results that will be presented in the next uh 35 minutes or so will very much rely on this IPCC risk assessment framework that include actually as you can see here on the screen now on the three very principle components of this framework. The first one is actually linked to the hazards assessment. We all know that in risk analysis hazards doesn't mean risk and actually the hazard assessment uh uh uh look at the potential occurrence of climate events or trends that can cause harms to people and animals that we are talking today. So obviously the hazards here is very much in the language of climate impact drivers. The second component you can see on the screen is about exposure assessment and this ask how suitable is a given area of climate sensitive diseases. In the other word and uh are the conditions dry the vectors for example the partition the environment we are talking today for a disease to take home or spread there. And actually uh the last one the third is about vulnerability assessment and this is about the sustainability susceptibility. How badly would a given area of a population be affected if the risk disease risk you know takes place and this is really where the soio economics factor come in. for example the poverty levels access to the services because of the same diseases risk can mean very different way uh depending on how exposure unprepared a community is and finally of course when you know own this thing is our own and of different institution to deal with the responses you know taking different measure to mitigate or adapt uh uh to the risk that we are having in this concept and actually I want to highlight a few uh component like this because you know our colleague will continue now to talk about different components of the assessment and with that the first speaker I would like to invite now is my colleague from ENRI Dr. uh Terry Reissi he is a senior climate scientist at international livestock research institute based in Bababa to give a talk on the result linked to the first component of hazards assessment with that I would like to invite you to take the floor >> thank you uh can you see my screen >> yes I can see the screen but it would be good if you can put it in the uh uh presentation mode because I see both lines at the same time. >> Uh it's in the presentation mode. Let me try to do again. Uh >> what about now? >> Uh >> same >> is the same. >> Okay, let me share again I think. Okay, >> now it's okay. It's good. >> Okay, good. >> And I I would like to say that you would have 12 minutes for the print station, please. >> Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so uh thank you so much moderator. Uh my talk will be more on climate variability and change and as you mentioned that's one of the component for risk analysis uh the hazard analysis specifically for the livestock sector and this is more insights from this project related with climate and health. Um so uh the objective here uh is actually to use relatively high resolution observation and analysis data to study first the climate trend. How the focus has been as mentioned on two countries uh Zambia and also uh Ghana. So the idea is to look how the trend has been and how the variability have been for the last 30 40 years in those two countries and also to specifically use some uh indices uh for the livestock tester to see how those extreme events also have been evolving for the last 30 40 years in those regions as well as uh also to look into future climate hazards so that we can uh plan about the impact of climate change on the livestock sector and what adaptation mechanisms that has to come in specifically related to those kinds of risks. So this has been our objective in general. So what did we use? We used two kinds of data sets. The first type of data set was just observational data set. As you know we have a bit of challenge in Africa to have a continuous data set in many of the stations in many of the the countries. So we used a kind of uh station merged satellite data which is widely used uh called chipsy data for rainfall. We have done a number of analysis how good this data set is in Africa and we have made few publication along that line. So this has been what we use for rainfall and also for temperature we used era 5 data sets for the historical pilot. And one of the challenge uh looking especially on the future projection is to really have a high resolution uh projection data uh particularly what is available now from many of the international climate centers particularly what we call CMP 6 is relatively in a higher or in a coarser resolution like for example about 100 kilometer. So especially if you are interested to look into impact analysis we have to do some downscaling bias correction and and so on. So out of the 42 kind of uh model output from CP6 we did a comparison because some of them was done for uh North America and Europe. So we selected about eight of them that works best for our region in Africa. So and once we use that we downscale it to 25 kilometer to look into future uh uh projection for both kind of scenarios we use two scenarios one is SP 245 and another one is 58 uh 85 in simple terms one is more on extreme cases like for example if we don't if the CO2 emission doesn't change very much and one is if we have some kind of moderate changes on greenhouse gas emissions. So these are the model two scenarios that we have chosen then uh like I said the first thing we did for both Ghana and Zambia is to look what the variability looks like for the last 40 years and and also the trend and the the climatology. As you can see in the top row uh what you see is for Ghana and the last uh the second rows are for Zambia. So for example in Ghana if you see the middle variability there is quite a few uh variability of rainfall in the southern region of Ghana for the last uh for the last uh you know 30 years. Uh but the trend also if you look the trend wherever you see the red is a dryness trend. So in Ghana especially the eastern part where you see the the the the the red there is a decrease in the rainfall pattern in in Ghana on the other hand if you see the one in Zambia it you don't see those red on the trend. So in in contrast in Zambia you can see generally lower but more specially uniform rainfall with higher valability in the north as you can see in the middle figure at the bottom row. So these are the general trends for the last 40 years. And then we looked at the interanual variability how the rainfall has been varying on on from year to year. And if you see in Ghana especially from this Elino years of 2015 there is a drying trend in Ghana uh at least for uh uh but on the other hand in Zambia you see a bit of uh weightness. So this is the kind of trend we have been seeing for the last 30 years in both in both uh in both countries. What about the extreme events? So now specifically for the livestock sector we know heat stress plays a big role on on the livestock when it comes to diseases and a number of other things. So we looked the trend of heat stress also for both Ghana and Zambia. So the first three figures in the first row are for Ghana. What you can see is both of course both countries show strong heat stress signals but mostly if you look into the Ghana experiencing higher temperature and more frequent hot days in the northern part of Ghana while you see also in Zambia it shows more localized hot spots. Especially if you look into the wet spell dry index which is the last uh one you see uh more uh dryness also in southern part of Ghana. So the first plot is uh more on maximum temperature. The middle plot for both is number of days having temperature more than 35°C. So in in the northern Ghana you see that kind of increasing trend so far and we looked also a second uh parameter to look into is also the drought how the drought condition has been in both countries in the last you know uh 30 years and SCPI the first plot is uh standard precipitation index which just looks into rainfall data sets the Middle one is SCPAI which takes evapo transpiration into consideration which temperature is also a factor. Also we looked CDD uh with CDD means consecutive dry days. So how the dry days have been there consecutively. So if you see wherever you see uh in Ghana for example in the first row it shows uh a mixed drought trends with increasing dryness in central areas. Wherever you see for example in the first two plots of SCPI and SCPI where you see more redness that's where uh there is an increase in uh and dryness central areas but also some localized waiting uh signals are there uh in in in some parts of Ghana uh as well but if you look into the consecutive dry days uh it's just just also longer dry spells particularly where you see the the blue ones are where there is increase in dry days. On the other hand, in Zambia, if you see the trend, uh it shows a bit, you know, more of you you don't see a drought increasing trend as you see in Ghana. uh more of like wetter kind of trend both as middle CPI and the CPI and also even if you look into the dry spell uh uh there is a decrease in the consecutive dry days which means there has been more weight days in in in Zambia as compared to Ghana. Now we looked also uh uh the heavy rainfall uh indicators uh for both uh countries. uh these are more uh you know to show if flood events have been recurrent in those regions heavy rainfalls have been uh quite uh often in that uh in these two region for the last 30 years and so on. So we use different parameters uh to look into the first one more the total precipitation and then the the probability of this uh uh uh what we call R95 and also we looked the 5day rainfall where uh it is beyond a certain value. So as you can see both countries shows stronger heavy precipitation in southern regions with Ghana showing a clear uh south to north gradient meaning the northern is a bit uh not wet as uh the south uh uh but more wetter condition in the southern uh parts of Ghana as well. >> You have two more minutes. You have two more minutes. >> Okay. Uh okay. Uh so this is the trend. Now I will go briefly into the future climate projections what it looks like. What we have seen so far is more on the last 30 years of data how the trend has been. And now if you look into the heat stress this is for uh uh like for 2050s 2080s we looked for heat stress. So you don't see a single area where the heat stress or the temperature is decreasing in both countries. So this is alarming that both Ghana and uh Zambia are showing strong in in increases in heat stress in in in in in most parts of their country. So this is what we look into in terms of heat stress and we looked also the uh precipitation uh uh like the drought conditions again uh when you look into uh the first plot is for Ghana and the one below is for uh Zambia. So both countries show decreasing wet spells uh and increasing overall uh drought condition particularly in in uh in uh in uh in um in uh in uh Ghana uh relatively Zambia again in the future projection it shows more uh increment in in in rainfall extreme rainfall again we looked at the extreme rainfall uh in in Ghana even even drought condition. This is what people are asking. How do drought and flood happen at the same time? You know this is what we are or have been projecting mostly saying that both extremes when both extremes are happening things are very difficult. So this shows that it is a drought condition but when the rainfall happens it is extreme and happens in a very short period of time. That's why we are having both drought and uh heavy rainfall conditions. So in uh Zambia more uh uh wetter heavy rainfall events are more likely but in Ghana we see both trends recurring. Summary uh so you can have a look at it. So rainfall variability we have looked at it uh the climatology of uh trends also the heat stress increased in both countries. We have looked into the drought characteristics and the heavy precipitations as well as uh uh extreme elements. This is and for future climate projections as I said there is strong increase in extreme heat indicators across both countries and specifically Ghana showing a widespread increase also uh Zambia is experiencing more intense increases. Drought condition as I said is uh uh uh u also uh showing more in in in Ghana as well. Uh precipitation changes uh heavy rainfall events have been also shown in this case. So what is the overall implication? This is I will close with this more the increasing heat stress will ne negatively impact livestock productivity fertility and survival and also we have seen changes to reinfor patterns which affects also feed availability and weather resources. So uh these are some of the impacts of those kind of risk analysis and we have made some suggestions uh to look into what adaptations mechanisms can be also taken specifically related with heat stress increase what we should be doing and also how that is impacting for example on diseases and and so on. These are some of the recommendations that has been and I think the presentation can be shared and people can see what are some of the adaptation mechanisms that should follow. Thank you. >> Excellent. Thank you very much Tiffrey for the very nice uh presentation focusing on on the data two countries. I think that it would give a lot of basis for the next talk. uh and I would like to remind also our participants that you are very welcome to ask question post the question in the box uh chat chat box and also in the Q&A in the webinar of the zoom platform so with that I would like now to invite Dr. Bernard Bet my very dear colleague at Indry. So Bernard is the principal scientist and team leader of one health at INRE and he will actually deep dive in the health impacts and adaptation measure focusing on livestock. Why livestock? Because you know when you talked about climate and health, climate change and health a lot of thing have been done on human health but in agriculture sector in particular for livestock and aquaculture I believe that you know the data and evidence remain quite limited and with that I would like to invite Bernard to uh give your talk on uh climate um you know and health impact on livestock side. Over to you Bernard. >> Yes thanks a lot uh Hung. I'm very happy to cover the animal health perspectives of this climate change basically using the results or the data that the ferry has captured. So I'm very happy um I thank most of the colleagues I worked with in this project mainly Sher Johnson from University of Ghana Peter Kimelli from University of Nairobi Henry Kissinger from Joo Kineta University of Africa and technology Caroline Mugo from Jinata University of Africa and technology. Dixon Pelle who was working with us based in Zambia. Humphrey Bander from the department of veterary services in Zambia and uh Liwali Mata from the same department in in in in Zambia. So um I'll go straight into the analysis that we did and basically to define what we mean by exposure assessment. You remember the exposure assessment is number two or the second piece of analysis in that framework which uh Hong shared earlier on. It's basically identification of the factors which determine the suitability of a given area to to to diseases. If you're dealing with disease, if you're dealing with health in in our perspective and this is basically an epidemiological analysis which we used statistical models as well as published compartmental mathematical models because in some cases statistical models couldn't really work well because of the nature of data that we were using. We used negative binomial models for the stat stats models and basically the outcome of interest that we were focusing on were the disease data sets which we got from countries from their surveillance systems. The predictors that were considered were mainly climate uh variables which the fairy talked about as well as additional geographical data sets including land use, land cover, altitude and and and and a few other variables. Here is a list of diseases which we studied. I think I don't have to list all of them but basically to clarify that there were differences in the number of diseases which we got from countries. Some of them more common like contemonia, foot and mouth disease, lumpy skin disease, uh thaleriosis, uh tpannonosomeasis, anthrax from Zambia. From Ghana, we did um CBP, fascosis, Newcastle and tryposomesis. For Kenya, it wasn't really a study country per se, but we did some opportunistic analysis because we had some data sets which were available from previous projects for comparative uh assessments. So to define the periods we called the current uh scenario that's the current status of the disease incidents was that period which covered 2010 to 2024 and then we did projections based on the climate projections to 2040s and to toss uh based on what I've shown uh there. So before I go to analysis we I need to cover two main things here. Mainly we usually think about what are the mechanisms which are involved in climate change. Usually these are divided into two. We have biological impacts which we call the direct impacts. These are things which affect this is how climate affects things like vectors and pathogens as well as host immune systems. But also much more important are the indirect impacts which are usually very difficult to analyze and this include soio economic practices you know behavioral adaptations which people do as they raise animals in a very severe climatic conditions. So in a nutshell our results gave us this very huge highle summary that we could actually classify the impacts of climate change on all those diseases into three levels. So the first is there are these clusters of diseases which will get diminished in in spial range. This is because it becomes much hotter, less conducive and less basically the vectors and pathogens would no longer be able to survive within those conditions. And here we have specific examples including fasciases and tets which I'll be coming to in a short while. Then we have diseases which will then result into periodic epidemics in areas in which we find these diseases. This is include contagious bobin pneumonia uh contagious capine prolon pneumonia and PPR. These are diseases which are common in pastoral areas. We don't expect them to to expand into high potential areas because high human population densities are really limiting movement of animals away from the pastural areas. But because of the drought incidences, we'll be experiencing repeated outbreaks in those um areas because of local movements of animals, uh heat stress and poor nutrition and those are the main drivers for those uh repeated epidemics. Then we have a bigger group of diseases which will then expand in geographical range and these are mainly vectorbone uh diseases which includes um um tickbone, mosquito bone and also those are which are transmitted by flies like lumby skin disease and anthrax and others. We don't have time to go into each analysis. So what I've done is just picked examples of each cluster to demonstrate that effect starting with the ones which would get diminished. Um this is fascosis. This is um liver fluke disease which we know it's a parasitic disease of cattle. It causes huge um impacts in terms of weight gain losses loss in milk yield mortality liver contamination from abattours and costs of treatment. So when we did the analysis we were able to fit um a statistical model which showed that there'll be reduction in the incidence of the disease with climate change and we also found that there's another study that had been done earlier on and I I paste it on the slide there you can see which found similar finding and used it used a different model apart from ours. So, so it means the study that we did really confirms what had been found uh earlier on. And the map I'm showing there is just a map from Ghana showing the different uh uh distribution of the disease between the current scenario and the future scenario which the disease will really get limited to specific locations where there are water water bodies. The second group is what I mentioned to be this complicated diseases including contagious bo and pneumonia which our modeling found that they are highly correlated with temperature. These are diseases which you really find high temperature is associated with high occurrence patterns and this is the model which we found which correlates the disease to to to to to climate variables. And we are saying here the drought conditions which uh teary mentioned will hasten movement of animals will husten nutritional stresses as well as um uh mortality in animals remain and when you have mortality rates rising in livestock population what happens is you disrupt the existing endemic patterns and so you have naive animals replacing those ones which had already been exposed and so in such a scenario you have cases of increased disease outbreaks within the pastoral areas. The third cluster of diseases are what we already know, most of us already know that vectorbone diseases will really increase with climate change. And I'm showing you here an example from Zambia. This is a tickbone tariosis. Our findings showed that this will increase by 36% across the country. That's the incidence. Also there's a tick that it transmits a disease which we call cremian congo hemorrhagic fever which is a zonotic disease. Also our finding showed that in that country there'll be an expansion in geograph geographical range of the tick vector. So all showing that you know we'll have more cases of these diseases happening under climate change. We did some modeling uh for this um the t theeriosis using it thick vector which is a repifilus just to show that with temperature there'll be reduction in development rates in the vector populations as well as increase in mortality rates for some of the uh thick stages but I think because we are sharing slides we'll ex examine this much more to see how how can we explain the mechanistic expansion of the disease into areas which are already getting warmer because it will be much more conducive for the thick for the tick to to thrive. I think this is my last example to say in in East Africa there's a huge interest on drift valley fever and we have also been modeling mosquitoes to see how they'll spread across uh the range and here we using a specific species we call kullex which is a secondary vector for rift valley fever we are showing that in the red marked regions those are the regions which will continue becoming conducive for the vector to survive but in the green areas which we are marking it will become much hotter for the vector to survive and so those will become less conducive but for the blue blue areas will be having um more um suitability for the for the for the for the for the for the vector to survive. The white areas are places which are already too hot for the vector to survive. So those are the shifts which we are talking about that some vectorbone diseases will become much more prevalent especially in the highlands and in the cooler areas which currently are considered to be free of the disease. I think I have two more slides just to talk about adaptation measures which we should be promoting for controlling the diseases. Mainly what we know already including strengthening surveillance systems. And here we talk about emphasizing syndroic surveillance so that we engage farmers in terms of reporting and developing forecasting systems which are based on climate data for for us to be able to detect this these diseases in advance. The second is improving disease control measures including vaccination strategies. And what we want to emphasize here, it's actually much more safer to do joint vaccinations of multiple diseases at the same time for you to save on delivery costs. And that would be what we could emphasize going forward. The third is one health and of course we know one health that you know coordination communication and working together across sectors and lastly better policies for disease control. What we found in some countries is we have multiple policies addressing the same thing. It will make much more sense to actually combine and harmonize those policies. So lessons learned. This is my last slide. I want to emphasize that you know there's there are huge gaps in terms of surveillance data sets and when even when you try to fit statistical models sometimes they don't work and I think we should really be emphasizing to countries to continue developing their capacities for surveillance to improve uh disease detection. We could as we did in some cases use theoretical models but theoretical models also need to be validated with the same surveillance data. So it's a kind of um a chicken and egg kind of a circular problem. We really need to work on surveillance. The second thing is um we have seen many many studies on climate change and most of them usually do disease by disease analysis. You so you do tickbone disease today tomorrow you do mosquitobone disease that really doesn't give you a good picture. What we are emphasizing it's it might be better to do a ecosystem focused analysis which then helps you to do the net changes the net because some diseases will reduce others will increase and so you need to see the totality of the changes which are happening in a given ecosystem for you to make a call in terms of disease burden. Lastly and this is important is we need to go beyond pharmaceutical interventions. We talk about we keep talking about surveillance we keep talking about vaccination but these things can take us to some point where we need to do much more and that much more is actually working with farmers to change their practices so that in Africa it's very difficult to emphasize or to push for testing and slaughter policy to remove infected animals but actually maybe that could be the best thing that we should be doing so that we eliminate sources of infection for the cleaner so I think That's the last slide and just to um want to thank partners who participated in this work and as Hung said Dera and the Bulma fund were the ones who funded uh the work. So over to you Hung. >> Thank you Bernard if you can mute yourself uh that would be nice. Okay. So, thank you very much Bernard for the presentation and actually it remind me also a lot of things that Bernard led within the ora one one health center for Africa. He have been leading for the last six years. He a very large project uh uh to develop the capacity of one health in uh different countries in Africa. I'm very glad also to see some of the interaction in the chat and actually you know one of the question is in fact you know are you talking about animal health and livestock who speaking about fish health and and that's exactly my uh invitation now to uh my colleagues Dr. David Van refer he's acting director of aquatic food biosciences and aquatic animal health science team lead at woodenfish one of the CG center as I said before and David you are welcome to take the floor to talk about health impacts and adaptation measures on aqua control site over to you thank you >> yeah sorry I'm not Bernard vet so I had some had some technical issues so I'm speaking from Bernard's thing so yeah I'm from I'm from Welsh um and we haven't got long as want to have a rich discussion later. So I'm going to rattle through the slides quite quickly but I briefly want to acknowledge uh the great colleagues who help with this piece of the work particularly uh Drs. Netaiji and Dr. Suni are actually part of the panelists later and uh and also Dr. Samado and colleagues from the University Gh as well as as as other of other colleagues from Welfish. So um next slide please. So our objectives really when we're talking about the risk assessment framework is really be focusing on hazards. Um and what we wanted to do uh was you know it's a grand title to talk about aquaculture and climate change but what we thought we would do was concentrate on one particular production system is intensive cage culture in in in in two contrasting African countries Ghana and Zambia. And we wanted to see the vulnerability of fish farmers to particularly fish diseases. But also we did do some work looking at potential other more physical impacts of climate change. Um using the approaches have all been elaborated about actually making predictions about what scenarios might be and how well the hair may impact um the the conditions in which the fish are re being rearing and also potentially the diseases as well as the data that's uh that fairies Dr. Tererry's had talked about earlier. We were also able to access some data from the Zambiji River Authority and Vulta River Authority plus some air temperature data again. Next slide please. So there's two study areas I think many people on the call will know them well is Lake Vulta in in Ghana and um and Lake Kuriba in um in in in Zambia obviously um contrasting both big lakes um um and but actually by from a physical point of view actually they they share a lot of different characteristics which came out and affected the the potential hazards and the likely impact we identified. Um and I think this is kind of interesting in uh in many ways because there you have the intersection of climate change and the rapid expansion of cage culture. For those on the call who are not from agriculture background, tilapia is is is one of the most widely farmed fish species um internationally and particularly in the global south. And there's a a really big growth of tilapia culture in the African continent and the these and a lot of this in particularly in these two countries is centered through intensive cage culture. Um both lakes are extremely important. Transboundary lakes have huge economic importance supporting hydroelectric power generation and livelihoods. Um next slide please. So to cut to the chase as we'd say um what were the climate change modeling these scenarios pretty extreme actually we're talking potentially water temperatures going up to four degrees or so and in in both lakes. Um uh rainfall is interesting. see variability. One of the big things come out of this, anyone who works with climate change knows this is not a straight line. Um, some Vulture in particular, we're likely to see a lot more increased pulses of rainfall which are a hazard in themselves. I'll talk about that later. And in in in Zambia and Kuriba um that part of the of Zambia particularly looking at the potentially declining rainfalls um and again this is likely predicted to carry on. This is sort of inconsistency particularly in in Ghana and potentially reduction in in in Zambia. Uh and we're likely to have more extreme events and that's going to have a massive impact on all farming practices particularly in agriculture. Severe droughts obvious issues related to that but also flooding is also a massive hazard and we'll talk a bit Ghana's already seen this and evaporation. Um both lakes quite different from a biohysical point of view or hydraological point of view. Um the kuribas monometic say turns over once a year. You have stratification. Um and you don't tend to see so much that in in in in Ghana. So there's some differences there. Next slide please. Um again some just kind of highlights like like like we've done a lot but this is just to show some of the highlights here is um you can see when you look at on the left you see what modeling what the thermal stress that we're probably already seeing in Kuriba. Um and you know fish have a have a you know they're intimately um associated with their water environment and that affects how they grow and thrive and when you ext when you go below certain levels and above certain levels they will not do as well. And then as I say as I alluded to the the Ghana tilapia industry had a big issue a few years ago when there was an uncontrolled lease of release of dam water that basically washed away a lot of the farms downstream of the dam. Next slide please. One of the main things we did my background is aquatic animal health and obviously we've worked in Africa for a while um through wellfish and previous work is we we did a and with Dr. Sonia we'll talk a little bit and Dr. Nessai will talk a little bit later is we identified what what based on uh based on literatur and and expert analysis what might be the main diseases first of all causing impact and make some sort of effectly estimations about how climate change may affect them. Bacterial diseases u a real issue on both lakes. Structure caucus galacti is kind of true one health challenge that can affect is a wide variety of taxes including humans and fish. Uh we lactocus garg an emerging disease in in in lake kuriba. We think that might become more of a problem and arommonus again these bacterial diseases we think will become more of an issue if things warm up. Um eus we'll talk a little bit about and IKV have a couple of slides on those. Thank you. Next slide. Dr. Egalactia as I mentioned a very interesting pathogen. It is you know cause neonatal problems in humans and it also is a severe disease of fish and um certainly the the the industry the developing tilapia industry in a number of here anecdotally and also by by the literature is severely affected by this disease. We can speculate about what increasing temperatures or or stress might do for the fish but it's probably not going to be good. we may see more of these type of bacterial diseases causing problems. Next slide please. ISKV infeis virus uh one we're really watching out for um caused massive impacts in in in in Ghana uh 200 in 2018 I was involved in that work with Ghana and colleagues but effectively it took out about 70 to 80% of the biomass in the lake at the time which is about 60 70,000 tons it was a transboundary incursion climate change and this disease we're not sure it's probably not good but yeah these are examples of the sort pathogens and actually what's coming out of this is we might identify the particular hazards and actually we don't really necessarily have good information about how these climate change may specifically affect them. So we're at the hazard identification stage. Next slide please. EOS another important disease. It actually doesn't necessarily affect tilapia but it certainly affects a lot of other freshwater species present um in in in in East Africa in particular and some nice data from Dr. Song and colleagues in terms of um of surveillance work they've done showing it's relatively high prevalence and again we're not really sure of the impact of that the and what the suggestion is if you have very high if you have a lot more rainfall and more water um flooding events then you may have more eus next slide please physical responses um yes so just to repeat what I've said before um it's going to be different between the the both lake systems because they're hydraologically really quite different and one's monometic turning over. The other isn't. And that's going to affect how how how they respond to changing temperatures. Oxygenamics. Um again, those who are not agricultures clearly fish live in water. They're responsible for that's their home, but it's also their source of of of of oxygen and and this will affect um dissolved oxygen levels and affect them and stress them and hydraological stress both flood pro both are not good for aquaculture flood pulses or drought driven. Um I think particularly the bacterial diseases we think will become more of a problem um as the fish are stressed and concentrated. Um but there's also other issues such as Ca how I will bloom risks as well which we think may be more of a problem in the lakes if they warm up. So there may also be some human health risks as well as to to the biodiversity on the lakes. um system level outcomes, chronic stress, multipathogen risks. None of this is good frankly and the farmers probably need to start and we'll talk a little bit about mitigating adapting to this. Thank you. Next slate. SL slide please. So in in brief impacts of climate change we think they're going to affect water quality deterioration um say the harle blooms or or alle blooms may be an issue um path proliferation transmission lot is speculative. I think one of people have to aware fish are completely hostage to their environment. They they do not regulate their body temperature and that affects how they respond to pathogens and it's not actually that always that straightforward. Warming up doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be more affected. It's actually an interplay between the immune system and the pathogen dynamics. A lot of this is unpredictable but probably not good. And likewise the food web. There may be wider impacts on the food webs in these systems. Thank you. Next slide. adapt and mitigations. It's going to be adaptation frankly but as we really for most of this um you can air rate and these are some practical mitigation adaptation measures that farmers may be able to do um exploring mobile code systems. I mean often you talk to the farmers and they're really hostage. They can't they can't like easily like they can a herd of goats move them from one one area to the other. They're stuck there and that is an issue for them. But maybe we can explore being able to move them. Selective water withdrawal. Um in bio security. The message that myself and others have been keep stressing is improve the conditions that you grow your fish in. Keep your stocking densities low and you're probably going to be able to at least kind of mitigate to some extent these effects. Um and um yeah, and one of the main main actual actions farmers can do is actually reduce feed intake. um when we spoke to them they say what happens when when they when they're not doing well um and then they stress by these thermal events what we reduce feed so there's some practical management measures policy adaption I think this is important as well uh we need to be and moving on to the final part I'll talk about the vaccines afterwards is I've identified the both these lakes are transboundary um disease climate change these are shared problems there's no point one country managing a particular disease problem if that disease is just going to kind of is is you're going to be affected by what your neighbor's doing. You need these need to be managed on an area transboundary basis in our view. Um vaccines yes people may not be aware fish also can be vaccinated. It would be nice to have tilapia um and other species more widely vaccinated. There are a lot of um in Bolter in particular on the big cage farms they do routinely vaccinate. maybe extend that approach and find ways that people can access and be equitable with access to these these interventions and breeding. Maybe we can either breed more heat tolerant fish or the other thing is grow different sort of fish. Tilapia not good in those conditions. Think of growing something else. Thank you. Next slide. And I think we're done and thank you very much. >> Excellent. Thank you very much uh David for the pres presentation on the fish and an aquatic site and actually it complement very much uh the livestock and aquatic food system that CGI is addressing uh in the sub program under the climate framework and and so on and on this proposal for adaptation and uh uh mitigation. Okay. Um dear colleagues and participants I think that know at that point we we have uh we had a very good overview about the finding of the project and recommendation and so on and you know that you know um we will have now uh uh discussion in the panels we want to put together. uh you know that you know my DDG Booyo says that you know the CGI mission is really to work with partners many national partners and regional partners really to transform the food system but also water system and land systems. This is actually our main job and all the week all the work we we we we are doing or we have been doing in different countries we rely a lot on the the partnership with the country where we are working and in the framework of the webinar today we emphasize very much our partnership with Zambia and Ghana and with that I would like to invite and introduce uh four distin partners uh on the panels and I would like now to invite introduce first uh Dr. Nessay Norris Mud is a senior scientist at Wfish in Zambia. So you know you are in CJ people based in Zambia and Dr. Monsa Sunj I'm sorry if my pronunciation of some of the name is not correct so I apologize for that. Uh so Monza Dr. Monzai, senior lecturer uh veterary pathology and aquatic animal health at the school of veterary medicine of university of Zambia. Now I see the camera now and Joffrey please help to pin on this nice camera on the screen for our participants. I would like to invite also and introduce Dr. Ivans uh I do the deputy director of the veterary services directorate at the ministry of food and agriculture in Ghana. So he's actually the regional director of veterary services in the northern region. Last but not least I would like to introduce uh uh Dr. Sher Johnson, associate professor at the school of veterary medicine at University of Ghana. So we have four panelists uh now uh uh with us. Um actually you are feel free uh to turn on the camera and with that I would like to go through a series of questions bringing the perspective from the natural system into the study that we have been doing with you. So uh with that the first question I would like to to ask our actually CG colleagues uh uh uh uh no actually sorry Dr. Wanza Sunung from Zambia uh actually the the princ pres the presentations uh highlighted quite clearly the key adaptation measure that could strengthen the resilience of Zambia's aquaculture sector to climate change. So now I would like to ask you to what extent are these recommendations already reflected in the Zambia climate chain uh strategy and if you allowed I would push you that if so if they are already included how when are they being implemented and if they are not yet included from the perspective what would be the step to be taken to integrate them into the strategy. So a bit long question with different perspective. So over to you for the reflections. >> Thank you so much. H I want to start by apologizing. My my laptop has gone off and my internet connectivity is very poor on the phone I'm using. So I may have to answer without um my camera on. So in the Zambian context, you know, adaptation as mentioned includes a number of things. of course surveillance, diagnosis, vaccination, bio security and uh climate informed early warning systems. In the Zambian context, surveillance is really being um attended to actually even at um government level at policy level because from the terrestrial animal perspective for example there are surveillance uh documents for a number of of diseases that affect um the nation. So uh surveillance is being carried out and these days there's also this uh move to ensure that the surveillance is climate sensitive you know bringing in data from um the climate uh space as well as um data from the health but putting it together so that we are aware of the changes that are happening in relation to climate change um biocurity there's a A lot of capacity building going on right now to ensure that even the private sector, the farmers, the small scale farmers especially are being um uh becoming aware of the importance of biocurity because as we all know climate change is not a sole problem. It's not the sole cause of these problems. It worsens in the face of um for example poor management practices and so on. So capacity building is really ongoing and I feel this is making a a bit of a change in both the aquaculture sector as well as terrestrial animals. However, one of the areas where there's need for improvement is um perhaps putting into place climate resilience infrastructure and hopefully these uh will be put in place with collaboration. The beauty is that uh policy makers are really interested in what's going on. As you could see, they participated even in the they they sent representation to be part of this um team that was carrying out this work. So I think I would end there. I don't know if I've answered your question adequately. >> Yes, it's it's very much uh uh in that line and and we hear you very clearly with our video. But thank you very much for uh the contribution. Um okay so this very good from from the pesty from Zambia. Let's let's move now to Ghana and with that I would like to ask a question to Dr. Ivans Yamo. Are you there? Um I see you in the list but if you can turn on the camera. So um for the study in Ghana uh can you hear me Dr. Ians? I can hear you please. >> Okay, very good. Thank you very much. I hear you also very clearly as well. So the question to you is in fact you know in the study um for Ghana shows that northern Ghana is endemic for several climate sensitive livestock diseases and is also the home to pastoral uh communities that may face challenges in assessing veterary services. And I know that you know you are the regional director of veterinary services in the north nor northern region. So the question is in fact now how can the department of veterinary services instit institutionalize the use of climate services to strengthen the disease surveillance in the regions. Okay you are muted. I believe that you listen to me. Okay, good. I can hear you now, please. >> Yes. Um, thank you very much. The northern sector of Ghana practically shares boundary with Bkina Pasu which is more or less like they has Tahill region with um a very oxy climate factors such as a drought and some sometimes also flood and um the study that has been done um putting everything into um into perspectives will certainly be able to help northern in Ghana to be able to take certain measures so that to prevent losses during due to climate change and also to also look at the disease dynamic actually also goes to climate vulnerability so that we able to address some of these disease dynamics and then um at the end of the day it will strengthen our surveillance system and then it will also strengthen our outbreak response our preparedness and also puts the livestock ready is a source of livelihood to a lot of farmers in the north said that at least it will certainly also give them a certain amount of guarantee or security of their livelihood if um all these things are able being we are able to implement them. Ghana actually has got um they needed legal framework in case of um outbreak outbreak investigation and implementing preventive measures and so on and so forth. But we needed this collaborative um um studies so that we put them into our policies so that at the end of the day it will certainly advise us when we are doing our policy and our planning what we should certainly be able to do to prevent outbreak of diseases in northern Ghana taking the climate vulnerability into consideration. Thank you. >> Thank you. So it it's very clear and I I'm very happy to hear you know how um actually the plan to use on this fighting for for those region and it's very good and maybe we come back to you a bit more later for for some uh uh others reflection but but let me now move to the next panelist actually my colleague from fish in Zambia Dr. Nessia I see you on the screen now and actually we are working for CG centers and you are part of the project team. Um can you please uh briefly summarize findings from the aquaculture work and highlight new leads for for this research in particular in the context of Zambia please. Over to you Nessia. >> Uh okay. Uh thank you very much. So across the Ghana and Zambia cases, our main finding is that climate change is creating conditions that increase the risk of disease outbreaks in agriculture systems. Um so for example uh the the the hazards that have been pre presented by the previous speakers such as rising water temperatures, drought, declining water levels and so on. uh these hazards they interact with high cage stocking densities in the legs, organic loading, weak biocurity measures, limited diagnostic services, inconsistent disease surveillance and so on to increase the livelihood and severity of outbreaks. So when we look at the two legs also uh lake kariba and lake vulta they show uh both common and distinct risks for kariba we have prolonged warming drought stratification habitat compression um which are also associated with heightened uh risks for bacterial diseases uh which we've already presented such as lactoas and others In Lake Va we know that there's fluctuating water quality trophication episodic hypoxia which also leads which contributes rather to severe mortality events involving ISKNV and so on. So when we look at the the the Ghana case especially the experience with the ISKNV it also provides an important warning for countries such as Zambia where the virus has the virus has not yet been reported but it it could also have very serious consequences if introduced. So we need to learn from our counterparts in Ghana. uh it has already also it was also presented that the impacts of climate change they are going beyond uh just production systems they but they also affect livelihoods for small scale uh farmers who are in cage culture even commercial farmers as well women processors traders and when farmers try to deal with the the the outbreak of bacterial diseases it can then also lead to antimicrobial resistance if this is not done uh in accordance to the to the protocols. So in terms of new research areas, we need to establish integrated longitudinal data sets linking climate, water quality, stocking practices by farmers, fish performance and also confirmed disease outbreaks to identify critical temperature and dissolved oxygen thresholds. And then we can then use this information to develop seasonal early warning models for fish diseases particularly for for Zambia and also for Ghana. These early warning models they are they are lacking and they could be very helpful for for for for fish farmers particularly in the cage culture systems that we're talking about. uh we also need to investigate how warming and uh warming of the water and epoxia affect the transmission career states and environmental persistence and co- infection dynamics of ISKV with these bacterial pathogens and other emerging pathogens because from the Ghana case we saw that V is also happening in all in co-infection uh circumstances as well. We also need to test the biological and economic effectiveness of the adaptation packages that uh have been uh suggested which include aeration improved cage sighting even movement of cages uh seasonal stalking density adjustment and so on vaccines probiotics and also having disease tolerant fish strains that are also heat tolerant. So that's where we need to work with our colleagues who are also in in fish breeding and and genetics. Um when it comes to the social economic impacts uh we we could also do research which examine farmers adaptive capacities, gendered livelihoods impacts, uptake of climate information and also insurance and um some of the institutional arrangements that are required for coordinated aquatic health surveillance because we know that Kariba is a transboundary lake and also uh lake volta is also within the VA basin. So how do we then coordinate aquatic health surveillance? We had Dr. Sun saying that uh some surveillance is happening in in for example in Zambia but is it the same across the border and so on. So we need to have some coordinated efforts. uh one of the last research areas that I could think of also is to uh conduct also research on um priority zonotic disease risks. Uh in the Zambia case, we heard from the ministry of uh health uh when we had our last meeting talking about their surveillance of pathogens such as Edward Tarda which have potential which are zunotic diseases and which are also which where there is a potential for outbreak due to changes in in migratory patterns for birds introducing this disease into new areas or bringing in this disease and so forth. So I think that these are some of the things. Of course in the study we we didn't focus also particularly on parasitic diseases but this is also something that could also be of interest to look at the links between climate change and some of these parasitic diseases in these legs. So overall instead of reacting to disease outbreaks we need to to to conduct research which will help us to predict outbreaks in order to promote climate informed aquatic health management. Uh so this also means that we need to have improved surveillance which my colleague uh Dr. Sun has already mentioned. uh we need also to improve farm management practices and approaches to also reduce the incidence of diseases, promote resilient fish genetics and also provide social economic support for fishes and strong transboundary governance. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. Uh thank you very much uh uh nay for for the input but also highlighting the research direction from the perspective based on the fighting in uh in in the country and I like very much some of the propo proposal linked to the social science research but also on the disease surveillance linked to the one health approach. I don't know how much you are aware but I I allow myself to to tell you that you know in the context of Zambia uh the EU funded project cohes capacitating one health in southern in Africa supported also the country in some of the activities in one health in particular developing the one platform and I think that also point on zonotic diseases prioritization exercise would very much link to some of the partnership we are working there uh in in in Zambia Thank you very much. But let me ask the question now to Dr. Shir Johnson from Hungana. So um similar to the question I asked Nessi before uh Sher could you please briefly summarize the finding from livestock research component and highlights the new lead for research in the context of Ghana. Over to you. >> Thank you. Um yes this this research has been very this project has been very very useful. Um we realized that between Ghana and and um um and Zambia contagious um bovine plural pneumonia was common from from both countries but uh we had facilosis Newcastle and trapanosomiasis um in Ghana and whereas we had in addition to CBP we had the CCPP east coast fever lumpinsky disease in Zambia. Um there were many more other diseases that we considered but the data quality at the time of this project influence what was eventually settled on and um the in in Ghana situation it's also possible that there are there's evidence of river valley fever um crime um congo amii fever is also evident in the vectors But um there's a need for more work to be done to establish the effect of um climate change on this uh vector bone diseases. So um one recommendation from all that we have found is to strengthen the surveillance system. um Ghana in Ghana uh I know that there's been effort to digitize you know to uh do electronic um reporting of surveillance data uh but there's still a lot of um work to be done to make that a national uh uh uh to to have a national approach. So it is still very rudimentary paper based and maybe we are not doing a lot of analysis as we should and so this is one area that really needs to be strengthened. uh in Ghana they also had the policy on climate change and agriculture has been developed and it is available but that document focus heavily on the on crops you know um not so much on livestock and that is why uh this project is is been very relevant to bring to the four areas that will need strengthening I'm aware that Zambia they have the digital platform where they um their data is gathered so it was even easier for analysis. But in both cases, there's a need to strengthen the surveillance system. Perhaps it's time to evaluate maybe select a number of climate sensitive diseases and evaluate the surveillance system to see whether the objectives are being achieved and then recommend do some recommendations for improvement in the face of climate change. Um so for both for both countries climate change must be brought to uh in front of the radar probably we are just working as usual. Ghana is experiencing a lot of flooding. The moment it start raining flooding is a big deal in the southern Ghana and when floods it's over we have so much heat that affect uh reproduction and all of that. So climate change is something that needs to be brought to the four in in the um in the analysis. So my suggestion in the face of all that we got will be to select a few of the climate sensitive diseases and do a longitudinal study where we gather data now looking at it rainfall temperature and all the important climate parameters you know assess them to see what we get so that we can now plan we can now predict and be ready for it. A lot of work is done even when there's flooding. A lot of work is done on the impact on human health. How much there's very little studies on all this flooding that is occurring, how it's affecting animal health, the impact of it to the the farmer and to and to the country. And so um a peculiar thing for Ghana is that we also have a lot of livestock mobility um both coming to and through Ghana to other countries. And so it's not just climate change but how how these are coming together lifetime mobility climate variability and outbreaks of diseases. So these are areas that will need to be looked into to understand the epidemiology of maybe a selected few diseases and take them over a period of time to generate data that is uh robust and can be used for um prediction. Thank you. Thank you very much Sherry for for for the reflection and also you know um uh uh uh adding a few uh good direction for for for future research but also I like very much the appreciation uh on the relevance of the project in the context of of Zambia and Ghana for that. So so thank you so much. Okay. Um I see that it has been quite active in the chat and then Q&A and um I think that is also very interesting to have some interaction between the audience and the speakers of this webinar. I saw some of the question was uh uh answer live but I still want to highlight a few key question in the Q&A in particular for Bernard and probably Bernard you know there's a very interesting question from me to you in the the Q&A box. So I let you read the question and probably you know uh provide some elements of respond to to measin over to you. Thank you very much. >> Yes, Hong I think I've seen the question. It's asking were we able to use climate uh data to analyze outbreaks in those countries? I I hope I understood the question rightly. Yes, because all the data that that we got from countries are actually recorded clinical events and so those are either outbreaks or or um cases which were captured and also when we analyzed this with climate data which we got from the ferry most of the diseases were showing positive correlations. So adjusted correlation with temperature. >> It's okay. >> Yeah. >> It it was reflected >> temperature and rainfall. And so meaning the question you're asking is really um well captured and we were able to show that climate variables were positively correlated with many of these including you know contagious bow and pronneumonia most of the vectorborn diseases and I think we are now finalizing our report we will post it online it's under peer review and you will be able to see the detailed analysis that were done to arrive at those conclusions which we were drawing. So over to you Hong. Thank you very much Bernard. That is is good in addition to the written answer here. So so maybe um I pick another question for David. David says quite a bit of the things on on fish side in the chat. Probably I let you so you know select one qu good questions and and and provide some elements that respond for that. Over to you. >> Okay. Hopefully everyone can see me. Okay. Hear me. Okay. >> Yes. >> Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Lots of good questions. Yeah. Most of them I can't answer frankly but I'll try. Um one important point um you know will s drying um is is a risk associated that's probably the other way around. I mean I think I've got animal health colleagues here. We typically think if we most of the pathogens we're dealing with exposing them to sunlight and drying particularly aquatic pathogens if anything is like toactivate them doesn't mean there's no risk but maybe we shouldn't be too worried about that one. um had some questions about are we were we only concerned about the world or organized animal health diseases? No, actually most of our analysis is really around the the good question again around the bacterial diseases which of these are typically not where we're listed but we think of particular impact and importance and then from Dr. toen. Thank you very much for that really hard question about heat shock. Just for people not aware um the farmers on Lake Vulture have been using a technique where they basically increase their resistance against um this important virto um Dr. Angelu she's been doing a lot of work with the farmers on there and there may be something in that I suppose that shows that this is not I mean the typical scientist we say it's quite difficult um sorry >> yeah I was just going to say very quickly it shows how complex these things And warming up doesn't necessarily mean the pathogens are going to be worse. It's more complicated than that. And it reflects the interplay between the immune system and the temperature and the and thermal range of the animals. And yeah, I think probably is going to be generally not good. But with some of these pathogens, warming them up may even they may even become less susceptible. And the iskn heat shock thing is an ongoing thing and there's been lots of good work by farmers and university garden researchers on that. So I refer you to their papers and we can put them on the chat. I think I don't know if Dr. Angela's on there. If she's not, we'll put her papers on. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. Uh David, so actually I'm happy that you addressed several questions in the same time. So then this is very very important for that. Okay. Look look at the time. I think that know we are about to to to to close the panelist but I still want to ask one question um you know combining different uh uh uh questions. Here you see uh this is actually a research scientific project and we talked a lot about science and analysis and so on but in the context of climate change and and diseases uh I believe that you know in the the process of transdisciplinarity. So I would like to ask the panelists you know uh from your perspective how the fighting from research of this project can be combined with some of the local knowledge on climate change and disease in the areas that you are working. In another word, I would like to ask you so reflection. For example, what what would be the role of local knowledge uh um and how it can be used uh in combination with scientific knowledge coming from from this project to address the uh issue of climate change and animal health or or fish health and some of the topics we discussed today and I reserve the question eventually you know to some of the colleagues in the panelists you know Dr. Sun you do you have any reflection on that shortly or Ians or actually other colleagues on the panels? >> Thank you home. Well, I would say, you know, locally, for example, in uh in Zambia, if I focus on the aquaculture side of things, um, of course, we hear of mass fish kills, for example, after a dry spell or if if there's been um very high temperatures and so on. But then for me actually what I was thinking about is the fact that there's increased recognition that climate change affects not only infectious disease but there's also the animal welfare issue nutrition and productivity. So if productivity is really being affected negatively, I feel it's very important that research brings in uh an aspect of um checking the interactions between uh for example AMR, animal welfare and nutrition and of course this requires interdisciplinary one health research. So I feel it would be necessary to interact in a one health space and not just limit it to a few people. This obviously will bring in industry partners you know commercial farmers as well as um the local people as you referred to local knowledge. Thank you. >> Excellent. Thank you very much for for for the uh uh uh reflection and this exactly is the one process we are talking about. Okay. So you want to add please. Yeah please. >> Yes. >> With regards to climate change at the community level they are fully aware of it because due to changes in the pattern especially in the pattern of growing crops they realize that practically the rain comes early and short and then and stop very early. So they are fully aware of the climate change and its effects both in the crop site and that of the livestock sector. But their major concern is at the community level. what mitigating um um interventions can they possibly do to mitigate this whilst looking at the national level or the government policy level that other actions we taken. So if we are able as results of this research work come out at at the community level mitigation measure that can be even educated and then the farmers or the community can adopt I think it'll go a certain a long way to help um the li and protect the livelihood of the community. Thank you. Thank you very much. Very interesting uh as a perspective you you bring in Dr. Ivans. Okay. So may I ask do you have any other reflection from other panelists on this transdisciplinarity process local knowledge partnerships uh before we we close the panel. Okay. Okay. This very good. So, so I'm very happy to see the interaction in the chat and but also uh the direct response from different panelist to you. So, so with that um I would like to thank you very much panelists for your contribution but also uh very active engagement uh and question from the audience uh in this discussion for the webinar today and with that I hand over now back to my DDG Dr. Bony Moyo from Indry to conclude the webinar and I'm very happy also that we have we we have managed time very nicely so far. So back to you uh uh Bony. >> Um thank you very much. I think uh Joffrey is going to share something but uh moderator I just wanted to see if we have one closing half a second remark from our climate expert Teferi. Are you online? >> Yes. Yes. >> Yeah. Please. >> Yes. Okay. Yeah. Thank you so much. Uh so I as I have presented in the in the in the presentations uh climate risks are really serious. uh and as we have seen both the trend and future projections of uh temperature drought and heavy rainfall extremes both in Ghana and uh Zambia these are going to be a bit intense and also more frequent so I think knowing just the risk or vulnerability and identifying the hot spots are not just enough that's why uh such strategies, such adaptation mechanisms are really key and this is not going to be just addressed by climate scientists but an integrated and interdisciplinary approach and that's why I like you know uh people from the academia from CG centers from government from veterinary and everyone I think we need uh to see a very integrated uh uh work together and um and This is what we witnessed also in our analysis that these are real things and uh we have already seen the trend even now. So I see also some questions on Elino uh current events and I I think uh people from Ethiopia for example now they can witness how the impact of Elino is already happening in the country and I'm also uh we are also expecting October, November, December rainfall in Kenya and many Eastern African countries are going to be also very extreme. So that's why we need to follow and we need to have a very coordinated climate information and the early warning system to address this upcoming challenge. Thank you. >> Uh thank you very much um that I'm glad you've also touched on the projected El Nino and that we really need to have plans uh for that. So in closing uh colleagues again join me in thanking the participants. I just want to highlight some of what I heard from the panelists from the presenters. We've heard that the analysis on climate projections show increasing thermal stress and incidences of drought. I'm sure you've you've seen this in in your different countries. And these changes will have major impacts on animal diseases for both livestock and aquaculture. And for aquaculture in uh specifically they will suffer more production shocks from flooding, temperature extremes and declining water quality. However, we have an opportunity through the the climate risk assessments which provide us u identification of vulnerable hotspots. We are able to prioritize investment and also design targeted adaptation strategies. Uh next slide please. So building on the climate resilient livestock and aquaculture systems requires that we translate this uh um evidence into some integrated actions and these include climate information services and early warning systems sustainable water and feed resources and also strengthening some institutional capacities. So our call to action is let's accelerate the implementation of proven adaptation measures while investing in applied research to strengthen existing approaches and develop new context specific interventions and and this requires uh coming together from different expertise, different partnerships. I saw on the chart someone highlighted that we need to work beyond with the in our partnerships go beyond the universities also bring in the private sector it's really been a lively uh discussion also through the chats I just want to also highlight that uh as someone already indicated during the discussions that pharmaceutical interventions including vaccination can only go so farm. Greater investment is also needed in behavior change communication in order to encourage farmers to adopt safer and more effective disease prevention and livestock and agriculture management practices. So in a nutshell, this webinar has given us really an opportunity and is a timely um opportunity where we have discussed, reflected and looked at some of the results from this project on animal health under a worsening climate crisis. So I hope this has also motivated you all to continue to research in this area but also um connect and through your networks in country, regional and continental to to um have some of these preparedness plans and early warning systems uh in place for better uh and sustainable livestock and aquatic uh food systems. So colleagues join me again in thanking all the participants, the presenters, the panelists, uh our moderator home for keeping us on time. So I don't want us to go too much over time. So thank all the organizers, our our collaborators, our fun and everyone who made today possible. So wishing you all a good afternoon, a good evening and let's continue to work together on this uh topic and thank you very much and have a good day. Bye-bye.