Ced Hesse

Senior fellow, Climate Change; team leader, climate resilience, productivity and equity in the drylands

Ced Hesse is an expert on the livelihoods of dryland areas, particularly pastoralism. His work focusses on delivering devolved financial mechanisms to access and manage climate finance, enabling community prioritisation of funds, resilience planning, and developing M&E systems for tracking the impacts of adaptation. He is currently working on mainstreaming climate adaptation into local government planning in Kenya, Mali, Senegal and Tanzania. 

He is also interested in the design and delivery of policy-oriented training based on experiential learning, and is working on mainstreaming knowledge of dryland livelihoods into university curricula in Ethiopia and Kenya. 

Expertise

Policy analysis on dryland livehoods systems, particularly pastoralism; design and delivery of policy-oriented training based on experiential learning; and policy-oriented communications and advocacy.

Before IIED

Director of the Arid Lands Information Network, Dakar, Senegal.

Current work

  • Action-research mainstreaming adaptation into local government planning in Kenya, Mali, Senegal and Tanzania involving the design, piloting and assessment of devolved financial mechanisms to access and manage climate finance; devolved government decision-making frameworks to enable community prioritisation of funds; resilience planning tools that incorporate climate information; and M&E systems to track development impacts as a result of improved adaptation. 
  • Action research on mainstreaming knowledge on dryland livelihood systems and their management of variability and unpredictability for food production and economic development into university under-graduate and graduate curricula in Ethiopia and Kenya.