Curated Content

This module provides guidance and a comprehensive menu of practical tools for integrating gender in the planning, design, implementation, and evaluation of projects and investments in climate-smart agriculture (CSA). The module emphasizes the importance and ultimate goal of integrating gender in CSA practices, which is to reduce gender inequalities and ensure that men and women can equally benefit from any intervention in the agricultural sector to reduce risks linked to climate change. Climate change has an impact on food and nutrition security and agriculture, and the agriculture sector is one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases. It is crucial to recognize that climate change affects men and women differently. The content is drawn from tested good practice and innovative approaches, with an emphasis on lessons learned, benefits and impacts, implementation issues, and replicability. These insights and lessons related to gender in CSA will assist practitioners to improve project planning, design, monitoring, and evaluation; to effectively scale up and enhance the sustainability of efforts that are already underway; or to pursue entirely different solutions. This module contains five thematic notes (TNs) that provide a concise and technically sound guide to gender integration in the selected themes. These notes summarize what has been done and highlight the success and lessons learned from projects and programs.

Many smallholder farmers in developing countries are facing food insecurity, poverty, the degradation of local land and water resources, and increasing climatic variability. These vulnerable farmers depend on agriculture both for food and nutrition security and as a way of coping with climate change. If agricultural systems are to meet the needs of these farmers, they must evolve in ways that lead to sustainable increases in food production and at the same time strengthen the resilience of farming communities and rural livelihoods. Bringing about this evolution involves introducing productive climate-resilient and low-emission agricultural practices in farmers' elds and adopting a broad vision of agricultural development that directly connects farmers with policies and programmes that can provide them with suitable incentives to adopt new practices.

Between now and 2050, the world’s population will increase by one-third. Most of these additional 2 billion people will live in developing countries. At the same time, more people will be living in cities. If current income and consumption growth trends continue, FAO estimates that agricultural production will have to increase by 60 percent by 2050 to satisfy the expected demands for food and feed. Agriculture must therefore transform itself if it is to feed a growing global population and provide the basis for economic growth and poverty reduction. Climate change will make this task more difficult under a business-as-usual scenario, due to adverse impacts on agriculture, requiring spiralling adaptation and related costs. To achieve food security and agricultural development goals, adaptation to climate change and lower emission intensities per output will be necessary. This transformation must be accomplished without depletion of the natural resource base. Climate change is already having an impact on agriculture and food security as a result of increased prevalence of extreme events and increased unpredictability of weather patterns. This can lead to reductions in production and lower incomes in vulnerable areas. These changes can also affect global food prices. Developing countries and smallholder farmers and pastoralists in particular are being especially hard hit by these changes. Many of these small-scale producers are already coping with a degraded natural resource base. They often lack knowledge about potential options for adapting their production systems and have limited assets and risk-taking capacity to access and use technologies and financial services. Enhancing food security while contributing to mitigate climate change and preserving the natural resource base and vital ecosystem services requires the transition to agricultural production systems that are more productive, use inputs more efficiently, have less variability and greater stability in their outputs, and are more resilient to risks, shocks and long-term climate variability. More productive and more resilient agriculture requires a major shift in the way land, water, soil nutrients and genetic resources are managed to ensure that these resources are used more efficiently. Making this shift requires considerable changes in national and local governance, legislation, policies and financial mechanisms. This transformation will also involve improving producers’ access to markets. By reducing greenhouse gas emissions per unit of land and/or agricultural product and increasing carbon sinks, these changes will contribute significantly to the mitigation of climate change.

Why do we need climate-smart agriculture? This brief overview answers key questions about Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA): what it is, what makes it different, what are the main elements, and what actions are needed to implement CSA.

Countries vary in their institutional technical and financial abilities to prepare for climate change in agriculture and to balance food security, adaptation, and mitigation goals.Indicators for climate readiness provide guidance to countries and enable monitoring progress. Readiness assessments can enable donors, investors and national decision-makers to identify where investments are needed or likely to be successful. Examples of climate readiness indicators are provided for five work areas: 1. governance and stakeholder engagement, 2. knowledge and information services, 3. climate-smart agricultural strategy and implementation frameworks, 4. national and subnational capabilities and 5. national information and accounting systems.

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is being widely promoted as a solution for food insecurity and climate change adaptation in food systems of sub-Saharan Africa, while simultaneously reducing the rate of greenhouse gas emissions. Governments throughout Africa are writing policies and programs to promote CSA practices despite uncertainty about the ability for practices to meet the triple CSA objectives of CSA. We conducted a systematic review of 175 peer-reviewed and grey literature studies, to gauge the impact of over seventy potential CSA practices on CSA outcomes in Tanzania and Uganda. Using a total of 6,342 observations, we found that practice impacts were highly context (i.e. farming system and location) specific. Nevertheless, practice effect across CSA outcomes generally agreed in direction. While our results suggest that CSA is indeed possible, lack of mitigation data precludes a more conclusive statement. Furthermore, the inclusion of potential adoption rates changes the potential of CSA practices to achieve benefits at scale. Given the uncertainty and variable impacts of practices across regions and outcomes, it is critical for decision makers to prioritize practices based on their desired outcomes and local context.

This report talks about the global challenge in terms of climate change and agriculture in the World. It particularly focuses on the climate projections and the related challenges interms of agriculture in Africa. Feeding people in decades to come will require ingenuity and innovation to produce more food on less land in more sustainable ways. Climate change will exacerbate already tight resourceconstraints by making weather more extreme and variable and by decreasing average yields worldwide. In countries where the economy is heavily based on agriculture, development of the agricultural sector is the most efficient poverty reduction measure. Yet agricultural expansion for food production and economic development which comes at the expense of soil, water, biodiversity or forests, conflicts with other global and national goals. This report highlights few country examples as follows : (i) improving hillside productivity in Rwanda; (ii) natural regeneration of agroforestry systems in Niger; (iii) greening Ethiopia; (iv) linking weather risk management with social protection in Ethiopia; (v) conservation farming in Zambia; (vi) restoring Vietnam’s mangrove buffer; (vii) community managed sustainable agriculture in India; (viii) using weather index insurance to improve relief efforts in the event of drought in Mexico; (viii) erosion control in China (ix) the three rivers in China, sustainable grazing and carbon credits; (x) cooking with biogas in China; and (xi) silvopastoral approaches in costa rica and Nicaragua. The report concludes with the following findings : (i) early action is needed to identify and scale up best practice, to build capacity and experience and to help clarify future choices; (ii) considerable finance will be needed to rapidly implement proven programs and support poverty alleviation and food security goals in a changing climate; and (iii) Durban offers a unique opportunity for Africa to shape the global climate agenda and establish an agriculture work program that is informed by science and covers adaptation and mitigation.

DFID has recognised a need to provide guidance to country offices (CO) on what actions are needed to address the predicted impacts (both negative and positive) of climate change on agriculture and the potential adaptation measures. There is a need to establish what expert, evidence-based programme and policy guidance already exists, its applicability to DFID and its overall quality. This will establish whether there is a need to produce a separate and tailored Topic Guide to assist CO’s in designing and managing programmes, and inform the development of specific Future Fit guidance on food and agriculture.

This report is the results of a desk based study that reviewed 14 examples of guidance on agriculture and climate adaptation and was commissioned to help inform whether a new Topic Guide would be relevant and useful for DFID.

This report has been produced by the Global Climate Adaptation Partnership with the assistance of the UK Department for International Development (DFID) contracted through the Climate, Environment, Infrastructure and Livelihoods Professional Evidence and Applied Knowledge Services (CEIL PEAKS) programme, jointly managed by HTSPE Limited and IMC Worldwide Limited. Some of the material draws upon earlier work by the Global Climate Adaptation Partnership (citations are provided in the text).

Alternate wetting and drying (AWD) is a rice management practice that reduces water use by up to 30% and can save farmers money on irrigation and pumping costs. AWD reduces methane emissions by 48% without reducing yield. Efficient nitrogen use and application of organic inputs to dry soil can further reduce emissions. Incentives for adoption of AWD are higher when farmers pay for pump irrigation.

Conservation agriculture is an approach to agricultural management based on three principles:

1. Minimum soil disturbance
Zero tillage is ideal, but the system may involve controlled tillage in

which no more than 20 to 25% of the soil surface is disturbed.

2. Retention of crop residues or other soil surface cover
Many de nitions of CA use 30% permanent organic soil cover as the

minimum, but the ideal level of soil cover is site-speci c.

3. Use of crop rotations

Crop rotation helps reduce build-up of weeds, pests and diseases. Where farmers do not have enough land to rotate crops, intercropping can be used. Legumes are recommended as rotational crops for theirnitrogen- xing functions.