The Climate Smart Agriculture Project aims to build evidence-based agricultural strategies and investment frameworks to sustainably increase productivity and incomes, build resilience to climate change, and seek opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a way that supports national food security and development goals. The project conducts research in three countries to identify climate-smart agricultural practices and policies that achieve synergies across productivity, resilience, and carbon outcomes. Project outputs include an evidence base on best practices, a strategic framework and policy recommendations, and investment proposals to support the adoption of climate-smart agriculture.

1. Climate Smart Agriculture Project:
using policy and economic analysis as a basis
for investment project design and decisionmaking
Economics and Policy Innovations for Climate-Smart
Agriculture Program – ESA
Romina Cavatassi – Bjorn Conrad
Rome –Investment Days 17 December 2013
www.fao.org/climatechange/epic
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2. OUTLINE OF THE PRESENTATION
• Background and rationale of the project
• Theory of change: the logic of the project
• How does it translate in practice
• Improving the building blocks of Investment
proposal
• Moving Forward and conclusions
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3. BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE
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• Research on natural resources and agriculture:
solid and interesting results but unclear link
with policy changes or real world terms
• Agriculture: key sector to address challenges of
food security under climate change (sink and
source)
• Ag growth effective means of poverty reduction
• Projected CC impacts: need adaptation in agriculture
• Mitigation can come through synergistic measures
and be an additional source of finance
www.fao.org/climatechange/epic

4. CSA PROJECT
The CSA project aims building evidence-based
agricultural development strategies, policies and
investment frameworks to:
1. sustainably increase agricultural productivity and
incomes,
2. build resilience and the capacity of agricultural and
food systems to adapt to climate change, and
3. seek opportunities to reduce and remove GHGs
compatibly with their national food security and
development goals.
www.fao.org/climatechange/epic
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5. Project Framework
NEEDS
RESEARCH COMPONENT
OUTPUTS 5
Develop a policy environment
& and agricultural investments
to improve food security and
provide resilience under
climate uncertainty
Investment proposals
POLICY SUPPORT
COMPONENT
www.fao.org/climatechange/epic

6. Feeding into investment
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1. Working in three countries: Malawi, Zambia and Viet
Nam.
2. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of primary and
secondary data at hh and community level + climate and
geo-referenced data and institutional data to:
a) assess the situation,
b) Identify CSA best options in terms of adaptation but
also mitigation and food security (i.e. yield response, cost
benefit analysis, calculate mitigation potential etc),
c) understand barriers to CSA adoption
d) Identify enabling factors
www.fao.org/climatechange/epic

7. Identifying Best Practices
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The natural approach to identifying CSA best
practices is to examine proxies for the three pillars
of CSA:
1. Productivity
2. Resilience
3. Carbon balances
•Performance on the 3 CSA dimensions is context
specific: depends on the agro-ecological and
socioeconomic contexts, and on the farming
system it is being applied to.
www.fao.org/climatechange/epic
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8. Overarching
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1. Coordination between climate change and agricultural
policy (e.g. enhancing climate change and agricultural policy
alignment in support of CSA, Supporting capacity to link
international and national policy issues)
2. Capacity development:
• Supporting master students, a PhD student and mentoring
• Implement training activities to agricultural frontline staff
• Support policy makers’ participation to UNFCCC negotiations
3. Collaboration with CCAFS: way forward and linking
various project components
www.fao.org/climatechange/epic

9. Using scenarios to improve planning
• Decision makers critically review and adapt the
scenarios to ensure that they are plausible, challenging
and relevant to their concerns
• Then, the scenarios are used to challenge policies and
investments
• Plans can be made more concrete and elaborate by
conducting back-casting
• Stress-testing investment proposals in the context of
multiple scenarios will help make them more
concrete, flexible and feasible
www.fao.org/climatechange/epic
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10. Project Framework
NEEDS
Develop a policy environment
& and agricultural investments
to improve food security and
provide resilience under
climate uncertainty
RESEARCH COMPONENT
What are the synergies and tradeoffs
between food security, adaptation and
mitigation from ag. practices?
What are the barriers to adoption of CSA
practices?
Legal & Institutional Appraisal: mapping
institutional relationships and identifying
constraints
OUTPUTS 10
Evidence
Base
Strategic Framework
& Policy Advice
Investment proposals
POLICY SUPPORT
COMPONENT
What are the policy levers to facilitate
adoption and what will they cost?
Identifying where policy coordination at
the national level is needed and how to
do it
www.fao.org/climatechange/epic
Facilitating national participation/inputs
to climate and ag international policy
process
Capacity
Building

11. Building an EPIC-based investment proposal
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refined investment
• Country ownership and engagement
• Dynamic baseline and robustness of investment
• Identification and selection of project activities
• Basis for systemic interventions
different investment
EPIC as a model for intra-FAO cooperation on investments?
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12. Some examples: With climate information can target
interventions...
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Source:
(FAO, 2013

13. The case of Zambia
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Practices: Conservation Farming practices: minimum soil disturbance
(MSD) and crop rotation(CR)
– MSD adoption remains very low: ~5-6% (sample size 4,187)
– Significant dis-adoption: ~90% of MSD adopters in 2004 abandoned
it
– Adoption intensity is significantly higher for smallholders
Adoption: Strongest determinants
– Variability of rainfall
– Delays in the onset of rains
– Extension information
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14. Thank you!
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