Climate-smart smallholder agriculture: What’s different?
There is a growing consensus that climate change is transforming the context for rural
development, changing physical and socio-economic landscapes and making
smallholder development more expensive. But there is less consensus on how
smallholder agriculture practices should change as a result. The question is often asked:
what really is different about ‘climate-smart’smallholder agriculture that goes beyond
regular best practice in development? This article suggests three major changes:
• First, project and policy preparation need to reflect higher risks, where
vulnerability assessments and greater use of climate scenario modelling are
combined with a better understanding of interconnections between smallholder
farming and wider landscapes.
• Second, this deeper appreciation of interconnected risks should drive a major
scaling up of successful ‘multiple-benefit’ approaches to sustainable agricultural
intensification by smallholder farmers. These approaches can build climate
resilience through managing competing land-use systems at the landscape level,
while at the same time reducing poverty, enhancing biodiversity, increasing yields
and lowering greenhouse gas emissions.
• Third, climate change and fiscal austerity are reshaping the architecture of public (and potentially private) international development finance. This calls for: (i) new
efforts to enable smallholder farmers to become significant beneficiaries of
climate finance in order to reward multiple-benefit activities and help offset the
transition costs and risks of changing agricultural practices; and (ii) better ways to
achieve and then measure a wider range of multiple benefits beyond traditional
poverty and yield impacts.
Climate Change Climate and Variability in Southern Africa: Impacts and Adaptation in the agriculture sector
http://www.unep.org/themes/freshwater/documents/climate_change_and_variability_in_the_southern_africa.pdf
Tuesday, 29 May 2012 16:06
development, changing physical and socio-economic landscapes and making
smallholder development more expensive. But there is less consensus on how
smallholder agriculture practices should change as a result. The question is often asked:
what really is different about ‘climate-smart’smallholder agriculture that goes beyond
regular best practice in development? This article suggests three major changes:
• First, project and policy preparation need to reflect higher risks, where
vulnerability assessments and greater use of climate scenario modelling are
combined with a better understanding of interconnections between smallholder
farming and wider landscapes.
• Second, this deeper appreciation of interconnected risks should drive a major
scaling up of successful ‘multiple-benefit’ approaches to sustainable agricultural
intensification by smallholder farmers. These approaches can build climate
resilience through managing competing land-use systems at the landscape level,
while at the same time reducing poverty, enhancing biodiversity, increasing yields
and lowering greenhouse gas emissions.
• Third, climate change and fiscal austerity are reshaping the architecture of public (and potentially private) international development finance. This calls for: (i) new
efforts to enable smallholder farmers to become significant beneficiaries of
climate finance in order to reward multiple-benefit activities and help offset the
transition costs and risks of changing agricultural practices; and (ii) better ways to
achieve and then measure a wider range of multiple benefits beyond traditional
poverty and yield impacts.
More at:
http://www.ifad.org/pub/op/3.pdfClimate Change Climate and Variability in Southern Africa: Impacts and Adaptation in the agriculture sector
http://www.unep.org/themes/freshwater/documents/climate_change_and_variability_in_the_southern_africa.pdf
Climate-Smart' Agriculture: Policies, Practices and Financing for Food Security, Adaptation, and Mitigation.
http://www.fao.org/docrep/013/i1881e/i1881e00.pdfClimate-Smart Agriculture – Action on the Ground
http://climatechange.worldbank.org/content/climate-smart-agriculture-action-groundFarmer school and land management in Africa
ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/011/i0383e/i0383e.pdfInternational Food Policy Research Institute Impact of Farmer Field Schools on Agricultural Productivity and Poverty in East Africa
http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/ifpridp00992.pdfClimatic Change in Zambia: Ignore, Mitigate or Adapt?
http://www.fig.net/pub/fig2010/papers/ts02e/ts02e_mudenda_4196.pdfClimate-smart smallholder agriculture: What's different?- IFAD
http://www.ifad.org/pub/op/3.pdf
