April 2019: Climate-smart agriculture: Addressing rising food and nutritional insecurity
Climate change is quickly becoming one of the leading causes of severe food crises and a major risk to rural livelihoods. The number of extreme weather events has doubled since the early 1990s with an average of 213 events per year from 1990-2016. The effects of climate variations (in temperature and rainfall), and extremes (such as droughts, floods and storms), are felt most significantly in countries where a high proportion of the population depends on agriculture. In other words, developing countries will be disproportionately impacted by climate change.
Climate change is already affecting what crops can be grown where. Extreme events increase the risk of negatively impacting food production and can create sudden price increases that make nutritious food unaffordable. Millions of women and men farmers and their families face these risks today in addition to dwindling water accessibility and lower crop quality.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (SDGs) calls for an integrated approach to strengthening resilience to climate-related disasters (Goal 13), while reducing greenhouse gas emissions in food production, and also taking into account the need to end extreme poverty (Goal 1), achieve food security (Goal 2), and make agricultural systems more sustainable.
Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an approach that guides actions needed to transform and reorient agricultural systems to support sustainable development and ensure food security in a changing climate.
Climate-Smart Agriculture has three main objectives :
1. Sustainably increase agricultural productivity and support equitable increases in incomes
2. Adapt and build resilience to climate change at multiple levels.
3. Reduce and / or remove greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture (including fisheries, livestock and crops).
Climate-smart-agriculture provides the means for stakeholders at local, national and international levels to identify agricultural strategies, technologies and practices suitable to their local and regional conditions. CSA is implemented at two contrasting, but complementary entry points : at the policy level (macro) and in the field where smallholder farmers and large-scale agricultural enterprises are active (micro). CSA interventions are tested “in the field” where farmers and agricultural enterprises can evaluate CSA options and build on their existing knowledge. To be truly effective, national and local institutions should support evidence-based CSA approaches through related policies, financing and investment. Using a CSA approach can take many forms. It can contribute to the introduction of new farming systems that balance short-term needs for food security with long-term resilience such as in the case of conservation agriculture. It can be a tool to assess and manage climate risks through the collection of data and evidence to understand key vulnerabilities in the agriculture sector and inform the formulation of policies to overcome them. Finally, a CSA approach can build on farmer knowledge and priorities to implement suitable climate-smart options.
Both mitigation (the reduction of GHG emissions) and adaptation (reduction of vulnerability) to climate impacts are considered through CSA. On the mitigation side, for example, livestock
is a source of an estimated 14% of all global emissions, mostly associated with the land use change change leading to higher emissions. CSA practices can help reduce methane emissions from livestock through land management and the application of fertilizer that improves carbon sequestration. In terms of adaptation, CSA strategies can include practices and technologies that increase the efficiency of water and fertilizer use, increase crop diversity, and improve access to data on weather that helps farmers optimize their decision-making. CowaterSogema has over 32 years of experience in agriculture and rural development, with a strong expertise in the water sector. We work with communities, governments and 