Why climate-smart agriculture?
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Presentation by WorldFish's Suan Pheng Kam at the Regional Asia-Pacific Workshop on Climate Smart Agriculture: A Call for Action.
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Why climate-smart agriculture?
- 1. Why climate-smart agriculture Regional Asia-Pacific Workshop on Climate Smart Agriculture: A Call for Action Bangkok, 18 June 2015 Suan Pheng Kam http://www.worldfishcenter.org/
- 3. The Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) is one of the 16 CRPs
- 4. The three pillars of climate-smart agriculture Enhance achievement of agricultural development and national food security goals • FAO (2010) defines climate-smart agriculture as consisting of three main pillars: 1. Sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and incomes; 2. Building resilience to climate change (through adaptation); and 3. Reducing and/or removing greenhouse gases emissions where possible (through mitigation)
- 5. Why climate-smart agriculture in the Asia-Pacific region THE ASIA-PACIFIC IS AN ENORMOUSLY DIVERSE REGION THAT IS VULNERABLE TO CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACTS ON AGRICULTURE1 1 Agriculture in the broad sense: crops, livestock, fish production • >60% of world’s population; >50% of population in coastal zones • Agriculture dominates land use • A leading producer of food commodities • Largest producer of rice and animal products regionally • India is the largest producer of milk • China is the largest producer of pigs and aquaculture products • Thailand and Vietnam together form the largest exporters of shrimp and catfish • 87% of world’s smallholder farms, mainly rainfed
- 6. Why climate-smart agriculture in the Asia-Pacific region
- 7. Asia-Pacific: challenges for agriculture • Population is growing • Increasing demand for agricultural products – food, fibre, fuel • Average calorie consumption is rising • 60% more food will be needed by 2050, to be produced on less land and water (i.e. sustainable intensification) • The future of agriculture in the Asia Pacific region depends on it being climate smart
- 8. Changing climate: warmer, wetter, wierder ‘Virtually certain’ • Warming of atmosphere and oceans • Diminishing of snow, ice and permafrost ‘Very likely’ • Fewer cold days and nights, more hot days and nights • Warm spells/heat waves • Generally wetter, some areas drier • Faster sea level rise, in 95% of ocean area ‘Likely’ • Heavy rainfall events over more areas • Area affected by drought increases; delay in onset of rains • Intense extreme coastal events increase Source: IPCC Climate Change 2014 Synthesis Report Summary for Policymakers
- 9. Changing climate: warmer, wetter, wierder
- 10. Risks from changing climate Source: IPCC Climate change 2014 Synthesis Report Summary for Policymakers Increasi ng risk
- 11. CLIMATE CHANGE IS AFFECTING CROP YIELDS Mean relative yield change (%) from reference period (1980–2010) compared to local mean temperature change (°C) Source: Rosenzweig et al., 2014 Median yield change (%) for RCP8.5 with CO2 effects for main crops, without and with explicit N stress Source: Rosenzweig et al., 2014 The costs of not being climate smart
- 12. Source: Myers et al., 2014. Increasing CO2 threatens human nutrition. Nature DOI:10.1038/Nature13179 The costs of not being climate smart CLIMATE CHANGE IS AFFECTING NUTRITIONAL QUALITY OF FOOD
- 13. Countries below the dashed line are part of the Low- Income Food Deficit Countries (LIFDC) 2014 list. Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao’s People’s Democratic Republic and Vanuatu were in the 2010 LIFDC list. The costs of not being climate smart CLIMATE CHANGE WILL AFFECT HUMAN NUTRITIONAL BALANCE
- 14. The costs of not being climate smart CLIMATE CHANGE IS AFFECTING FISH PRODUCTION
- 15. The costs of not being climate smart How climate change might affect plans to derive livelihoods from fisheries and aquaculture in the Pacific CLIMATE CHANGE IS AFFECTING FISH PRODUCTION
- 16. Livestock production in the Asia Pacific: largely based on grazing and mixed farming systems •Supports >35% of poor households •By 2020, 30-40% of global milk and meat will be produced in Asia CC impacts on livestock: •Negative effect of elevated temperature and higher rainfall variability on pasture productivity •Direct effects of elevated temperature and solar radiation on • production (growth, meat, milk yield and quality, egg yield, weight and quality) • reproductive performance • animal health, immune response and disease susceptibility The costs of not being climate smart CLIMATE CHANGE IS AFFECTING LIVESTOCK PRODUCTION
- 17. Source: wsm.wsu.edu/researcher/wsmaug11_billions.pdf The costs of not being climate smart ARE MOST SEVERELY FELT BY THE POOR
- 18. The costs of not being climate smart FOOD PRICES SPIKE IN YEARS OF EXTREME CLIMATE TRIGGER SOCIAL UNREST
- 19. Sustainable productivity improvement Diversification/integration is also intensification in a sustainable way MANURE FIELDS CUT FODDER LIVESTOCK FISH POND STUBBLE POND MUD Integrated Agriculture-Aquaculture (IAA) boosts farm income
- 20. Adaptation measures for greater resilience
- 21. Agriculture, forestry and other land use Mitigation measures
- 23. - Case of the livestock industry Complementing climate-smart practices
- 24. Farm and food systems issues Landscapes and regional issues Institutional and policy issues Sustainable productivity improvement Breed crops, livestock, fish for a climate changed world Sustainable intensification and integrated farming of crops, livestock, fish Improve nutrient and water management and flows Integrated models for prioritizing practices and managing trade-offs Restore degraded farm lands, wetlands and forests Strengthen science- policy linkage Policy support to overcome barriers to CSA Understand trade-offs of diversification vs specialization Gender and class equity Building resilience Conservation agriculture Adjust crop calendars Use different crop cultivars and animal species/strains Integrated pest, disease and weed management Shift production areas over a changing landscape Improve ecosystem services: enhance role of forests and agro-forestry in disaster protection, water and biodiversity provision Enhanced weather forecasting and advisory services Empower women and the poor Pro-poor financing and insurance mechanisms Reducing GHG emission, enhancing GHG removal Improve soil carbon storage through good agronomy Develop carbon sequestration options Culture and consume lower down the food chain Increase energy use efficiency in food supply chains Innovative use of biomass and by-products Incentives for pro-poor mitigation The three pillars of CSA at scale
- 25. CSA: No regrets What’s new 1. Increased emphasis on a systems context, drawing on the notion of sustainable intensification to increase productivity with minimal environmental and climate change impacts 2. Longer term perspective on development pathways; climate change is a slow variable 3. More attention on assessing and managing climate risks 4. Greater emphasis on developing capacity to deal with uncertainty and trade-offs 5. Thinking about emissions too 6. Measuring efficacy of adaptation and mitigation efforts
- 26. SOCIO-ECOLOGICAL SYSTEM Global climate and environmental changes Finite natural resources -Land -Water -Forests -Aquatic resources DRIVERS OF CHANGE Population growth and migration Urbanization Food availability and access Culture and behavior Changing food habits Poverty Market forces Trade Policies and regulations Governance VULNERABILITIES TO CLIMATE CHANGE CLIMATE SMART AGRICULTURE Awareness Planning Implementation Monitoring and evaluation SCIENCE AND POLICYDESIRED OUTCOMES Food security Resilient agriculture Healthy livelihoods Comprehensive Collaborative Committed Modified from Steenwerth, et al., 2014 CSA in the context of the socio-ecological system
- 27. Climate-smart agriculture in international development agenda • Development plans of UN FAO, UN IFAD, World Bank, etc. • Sustainable and food secure pathways in discussions at • Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development; • 1st and 2nd Global Conferences on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change; and • Agriculture, Landscapes and Livelihoods Day at COP18 • May 2015 IPCC meeting on CC, Food and Agriculture recognized multi-functionality of agriculture; special report proposed on “Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security” • June 2015 UNFCC climate talks in Bonn: ensuring agriculture is in the global climate deal (Dec in Paris)
- 28. Implementing CSA the holistic way
- 29. Embedding climate change in sustainable agriculture CGIAR’s 2016-2030 Research Strategy and Agenda – Source: CGIAR CRPII Draft Portfolio Narrative.docx Forests Climate change: a cross-cutting issue
- 30. Regional initiatives: •Regional climate outlook •Coordinate agriculture and forestry for sustainable landscapes •Build innovation platforms •Bring science and policy together CSA: Thinking regionally, acting locally?
- 31. Sea-level rise increases tidal and salinity intrusion into low-lying areas of the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta in Bangladesh •Landscapes become more waterlogged with fresh and saline water at different times of the year •Farmers adapt by shifting from rice mono-cropping to diverse aquaculture- horticulture-rice systems Climate change adaptation in Bangladesh
- 32. Aquaculture-Horticulture- Rice System Fish rings in rice fields – microhabitats for fish Climate change adaptation in Bangladesh • WorldFish and local partners provide technical support for aquaculture by • Improving genetics of fishes • Enhancing the capacity of hatcheries to produce quality seed • Strengthening the private feed industry to produce quality feeds and provide advice on feeding practices • Support community-level efforts to sustain diverse population of local fish species for culture in farming landscapes
- 33. Climate change adaptation in Bangladesh Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia in Bangladesh (CSISA-BD) Aquaculture for Income and Nutrition (AIN) • Introduce aquaculture to diversify income sources and improve food and nutrition security, especially among poor and landless rural households
- 34. Building adaptive capacity in the Mekong region Integrating fisheries into local agro-ecosystem analysis for improved water allocation Supporting rice field fisheries and community-based fish culture Identify and improve productivity of best practice climate smart Aquaculture & IAA farming systems Optimizing water harvesting for pond aquaculture operations in flood plains Managing conflict associated with water allocation and water quality in the Mekong Delta
- 35. Building adaptive capacity in the Mekong region Scenario of increased salinity intrusion in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam Source: SIWRP Floating hapa cages adapted for fish farming in the wet season (left) and in the dry season (right)
- 36. Thank You
Editor's Notes
- Slide 4: Climate change threatens to undo years of progress achieved in agricultural development toward enhancing livelihoods and food security, with the most severe consequences falling on developing countries and the poor.Reducing this threat requires that agriculture must be practiced in climate smart ways so that the achievement of agricultural development and national food security goals is not compromised. The three pillars of Climate-Smart Agriculture are sustainable improvements in productivity, building resilience (through adaptation), and reducing and removing greenhouse gases (mitigation).
- Slide 5: The Asia-Pacific is an enormously diverse region, widely ranging in eco-physiography, nation size, population densities and economic development. Given its sheer population size (accounting for >60% of the world’s population) and considering that about half of the population live in the coastal zone, large populations are exposed to sea level rise and greater risks of extreme coastal events besides increasing vagaries of weather as direct impacts of climate change. Between 2002 and 2011, the Asian and Pacific region had the largest number of people affected, as well as the largest number of people killed by disasters (Statistical Yearbook for the Asia and the Pacific 2013). Accounting for roughly a quarter of the world’s GDP, the Asia Pacific region is a leading producer of food commodities - largest producer of rice and aquaculture products regionally, India being the largest producer nation of milk, China of pigs, Vietnam of catfish). Food production is predominantly at the smallholder scale (about 87% of the world’s smallholder farms are in the region) and mainly rainfed, thus being vulnerable to increasing uncertainty of rainfall events.
- Slide 6: Demand for agricultural products – food as well as fibre and fuel – continues to increase due to population growth, changes in diet as per capital income increases, and the need for alternative energy sources. Agriculture in the Asia Pacific thus needs to produce more on limited and dwindling land and water resources and be more resilient to risks associated with extreme weather events.
- Slide 7: Climate change simulation models vary considerably in projected results; however broad trends are indicative of a warmer, wetter but more marked seasonality and more unpredictable weather events that affect agriculture, directly and indirectly, through multiple pathways. The IPCC AR5 report estimates a confidence level >90% that there will be more frequent warm spells, heat waves and heavy rainfall and a confidence level >66% that there will be an increase in drought, tropical cyclones and extreme high tides. The magnitude of the events will vary depending on regions and the geographic areas within the region, but the signs are clear that climate change is affecting, and will further affect food production in the Asia-Pacific region.
- Slide 8: Risks associated with climate change vary across the Asia-Pacific region but the ultimate effect is on destabilizing livelihoods and food security through impacts on terrestrial and aquatic systems. More intensive rainfall exacerbates flooding on the one hand, while prolonged and more severe droughts cause greater vegetation water stress and water shortages for irrigation and aquaculture in terrestrial systems. Ocean warming and acidification are already showing impacts on marine and coastal ecosystems. Explanation of the slide: Representative key risks* for each region, including the potential for risk reduction through adaptation and mitigation, as well as limits to adaptation. Each key risk is assessed as very low, low, medium, high or very high. Risk levels are presented for three time frames: present, near term (here, for 2030–2040) and long term (here, for 2080–2100). In the near term, projected levels of global mean temperature increase do not diverge substantially across different emission scenarios. For the long term, risk levels are presented for two possible futures (2°C and 4°C global mean temperature increase above pre-industrial levels). For each timeframe, risk levels are indicated for a continuation of current adaptation and assuming high levels of current or future adaptation. Risk levels are not necessarily comparable, especially across regions. *Identification of key risks was based on expert judgment using the following specific criteria: large magnitude, high probability or irreversibility of impacts; timing of impacts; persistent vulnerability or exposure contributing to risks; or limited potential to reduce risks through adaptation or mitigation.
- Slide 9: Climate change is affecting crop yields. Inter-comparison of multiple global gridded crop models (GGCMs) indicates strong negative effects from climate change, especially at higher levels of warming and at low latitudes where developing countries are concentrated. The slight increase in crop productivity at mid to high latitude for an increased local mean temperature of 1–3 °C would be offset by increased occurrence of frosts, heat waves and heavy rainfall. Simulations that consider explicit nitrogen stress result in much more severe impacts from climate change, with implications for adaptation planning. Explanation of the slide: Median yield changes (%) for RCP8.5 (2070–2099 in comparison to 1980–2010 baseline) with CO2 effects over all five GCMs x seven GGCMs (6 GGCMs for rice) for rainfed maize (35 ensemble members), wheat (35 ensemble members), rice (30 ensemble members), and soy (35 ensemble members). Hatching indicates areas where more than 70% of the ensemble members agree on the directionality of the impact factor. Gray areas indicate historical areas with little to no yield capacity. The bottom 8 panels show the corresponding yield change patterns over all five GCMs x four GGCMs with nitrogen stress (20 ensemble members from EPIC, GEPIC, pDSSAT, and PEGASUS; except for rice which has 15) (Left); and 3 GGCMs without nitrogen stress (15 ensemble members from GAEZ-IMAGE, LPJ-GUESS, and LPJmL).
- Slide 10: Climate change is affecting nutritional quality of food. Not only does crop yields decline with elevated temperatures, the nutritional quality of the main staple crops is also compromised at elevated atmospheric CO2 levels. C3 grains and legumes have lower concentrations of zinc and iron when grown under field conditions at the elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration predicted for the middle of this century (Myers et al., 2014). Dietary deficiencies of zinc and iron are a substantial global public health problem. An estimated two billion people suffer these deficiencies, causing a loss of 63 million life-years annually. Most of these people depend on C3 grains and legumes as their primary dietary source of zinc and iron. C3 crops other than legumes also have lower concentrations of protein, whereas C4 crops seem to be less affected. Differences between cultivars of a single crop suggest that breeding for decreased sensitivity to atmospheric CO2 concentration could partly address these new challenges to global health.
- Slide 11: Climate change will also human nutritional balance when production of meat and fish protein food is impacted. Asia accounts for almost two-thirds of global fish consumption and 21.4 kg per capita3 in 2011 – a level similar to Europe (22.0 kg/cap/yr) and North America (21.7 kg/cap/yr). Oceania has highest levels per capita at 25.1 kg/cap/yr. The share of total animal protein from fish is between 50 and 70 percent in Myanmar, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. Fish provides a similarly significant proportion of protein in the human diets in most small island states (e.g. more than 75 percent in the Solomon Islands). Explanation of the slide: Countries below the dashed line are part of the Low-Income Food Deficit Countries (LIFDC) 2014 list. Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao’s People’s Democratic Republic and Vanuatu were in the 2010 LIFDC list. The updated list of LIFDCs can be found at: http://www.fao.org/countryprofiles/lifdc/en/
- Slide 12: Climate change is affecting marine fisheries. Warming oceans are reshaping marine fisheries. Marine species are gradually moving away from the equator into cooler waters. From 1970 to 2006, as ocean temperatures were rising, fish catch in he sub-tropic and temperate areas increasingly included more warm-water species and fewer cool-water species. In the tropics the catch composition changed from 1970 to 1980 and then stabilized because there are no species with high enough temperature preferences to replace those that moved into higher latitudes. Simulations of catch potential suggest that besides a shift from low to mid-latitudes, a longitudinal shift occurring in the Pacific Ocean that would affect the tuna fisheries (to be elaborated in the next slide).
- Slide 13: Climate change will affect the sources and quality of food fish. Predicted spatial patterns of ocean warming suggest a likely shift of the prime feeding grounds for the skipjack tuna eastward resulting in higher skipjack tuna biomass in waters east of 170deg E, and marginal reduction in waters west of 170deg E, by 2035 and 2050, owing to climate change alone. Greater decreases are expected in the west when the effects of fishing are considered. Climate change is also expected to affect existing plans in the Pacific region to derive more livelihoods from fisheries and aquaculture resources in the Pacific (Bell, et al., 2013). with greater declines (in coral reef and coastal aquaculture) and smaller increases (for freshwater fisheries and pond aquaculture) than anticipated without climate change impacts. Explanation of the slide: Projected directions of existing plans to derive more livelihoods from fisheries and aquaculture resources, and effects of climate change on these plans. Projections are for the IPCC SRES A2 emissions scenario in 2035, 2050 and 2100, summarized as estimated increases (winners) or decreases (losers) in broad percentage categories. Oceanic (tuna) fisheries are separated into those east and west of 170degE. Projections for pond and coastal aquaculture (mariculture) are not relative to present-day production (which has potential for increase) and indicate estimated changes in production efficiency.
- Slide 14: Climate change is affecting livestock production. Globally livestock production has to increase in the next decades to satisfy growing needs. It is estimated that by 2050 global meat consumption will double that of today (Cohen (2001) with expected growth in population per capita consumption. By 2020, 30-40% of global milk and meat production is expected to be produced in Asia. Already India presently leads in milk production and China in swine production in the world. Livestock production in the Asia-Pacific is predominantly pastoral or mixed farming systems and hence is highly dependent on pasture productivity which is impacted in the same way as crops by climate change. Warming temperatures also impair animal production (growth, meat and milk yield and quality, egg yield, weight, and quality) and reproductive performance, metabolic and health status, and immune response.
- Slide 15: Climate change impacts are most severely felt by the poor. Given the sheer population size of the Asia Pacific and a region-wide poverty rate of about 20% (in 2011), the number of poor people living in extreme poverty remains high – estimated at 743 million people in 2011 (Statistical Yearbook for the Asia and the Pacific 2013) -despite several Asian countries having made remarkable progress in poverty reduction.
- Slide 16: Recent history has shown that food price spikes can cause instability and social revolt. The Center for American Program released a report in 2013 that traced the connection between climate change and the Arab Spring. It illustrated how a volatile mix of extreme weather, reduced food production, and food price spikes contributed to the instability that ripped through the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in 2011. Following a rash of extreme weather events, including severe drought and wildfires in Russia & Ukraine – which scientists have connected to climate change – the price of wheat jumped from just $4 per bushel in July 2010 to nearly $9 by February 2011. For the average Egyptian family, which spends 40% of its income on food, watching the price of food stuffs increase by up to ten-fold was too much to bear. Egyptians marched through the streets carrying loaves of bread and demanding the end of the Mubarak regime. The Arab Spring is far from the only time that food price spikes have driven instability and revolt, however. Food riots destabilized Haiti in 2008, while the Tortilla Crisis rocked Mexico in 2007. There is therefore a compelling need for agriculture to be climate smart to avoid social and political destabilization that will have repercussions on the economy and security of affected nations. http://timkovach.com/wp/2013/03/15/reshaping-americas-climate-and-food-aid-policies-to-tackle-instability/
- Slide 17: An array of agricultural interventions that enable sustained productivity increases through adaptation to and mitigation of climate change have been tested and promoted; successes achieved demonstrate the diversity of potential options across different regions, agricultural systems and thematic aspects including improved crop varieties, farm-level techniques, better weather forecasting and risk insurance. References: CCAFS, 201x. Climate-smart agriculture: Success stories from farming communities around the World. https://cgspace.cgiar.org/bitstream/handle/10568/34042/Climate_smart_farming_successesWEB.pdf?sequence=5 FAO Success Stories on Climate-Smart Agriculture Slide 15: CSA Pillar 1. Attaining sustained productivity improvements (aka sustainable intensification) in CSA includes both traditional techniques, such as mulching, intercropping, conservation agriculture, and pasture and manure management, and innovative practices such as integrated nutrient, water and pest management and improved water and nutrient flows in integrated farming systems. Limited attention has been given so far to fish as a climate smart adaptation. Unlike single-species commodities like crops and livestock, there are diverse aquatic species (loosely referred herewith as ‘fish’) that fit different ecologies and changing environmental conditions brought about by climate change. Small-scale fish farming is managed within the context of a livelihood approach and often is an adaptation option in itself through diversification of farmer’s income while increasing the total factor productivity of the farm.
- Slide 18: CSA Pillar 2. Specific adaptation measures responding to climate change include: using improved crop varieties and livestock and fish breeds that are better adapted to changed climatic conditions; simple adjustments to land, crop and livestock management such as optimizing sowing times; more efficient use (including multiple use and re-use where possible) of water and energy in the food production and supply chains; better weather forecasting and timely provision of data and information to farmers; risk insurance; and sustaining the ecosystem services of forests and water sources for combating climate change impacts, e.g. shoreline protection function of mangroves which are also important breeding and feeding grounds of commercially-important fish species
- Slide 19: CSA Pillar 3. Direct GHG emissions from the agriculture sector and associated land use changes are low relative to other urban-based sectors. Notwithstanding that, mitigation of GHG emissions reduces the impact of agriculture on climate change and is feasible. Explanation of the slide: Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by sector and total non-CO2 greenhouse gases (Kyoto gases) across sectors in baseline (faded bars) and mitigation scenarios (solid colour bars) that reach about 450 (430 to 480) ppm CO2-eq concentrations in 2100 (likely to limit warming to 2°C above preindustrial levels). Mitigation in the end-use sectors leads also to indirect emissions reductions in the upstream energy supply sector. Direct emissions of the end-use sectors thus do not include the emission reduction potential at the supply-side due to, for example, reduced electricity demand. The numbers at the bottom of the graphs refer to the number of scenarios included in the range (upper row: baseline scenarios; lower row: mitigation scenarios), which differs across sectors and time due to different sectoral resolution and time horizon of models. Emissions ranges for mitigation scenarios include the full portfolio of mitigation options; many models cannot reach 450 ppm CO2-eq concentration by 2100 in the absence of carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS). Negative emissions in the electricity sector are due to the application of bioenergy with carbon dioxide capture and storage (BECCS). ‘Net’ agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU) emissions consider afforestation, reforestation as well as deforestation activities.
- Slide 20: CSA Pillar 3. Sequestering carbon in the soils of croplands and grazing lands offers agriculture’s highest potential for climate change mitigation, followed by improved fertilizer management (particularly nitrogen fertilizer) which also increases fertilizer use efficiency and reduces production costs. Methane (with a global warming potential that is 25 times that of CO2) produced from cattle enteric fermentation is another source of agricultural GHG emission that can be mitigated.
- Slide 21: Climate-smart management, even within a sector, are not confined to just technological interventions (improved genetics, farming practices, etc.) but encompasses a range of options that synergistically contribute to adaptive and mitigative outcomes. As illustrated here by the livestock sector, being climate smart entails integrating various aspects of stock breeding and selection, animal health and disease management, grassland and feed management and manure management; while ensuring the build-up and flow of knowledge from experimentation to piloting to scaling out best practices across the value chain. Integration that extends beyond the farm to landscape and coordination across agricultural sectors (with crops and fish) would further capitalize on potential synergies and optimize the use of natural resources and ecosystem services.
- Slide 22: Integration that extends beyond the farm to landscape and coordination across agricultural sectors (with crops and fish) further capitalizes on potential synergies and optimize the use of natural resources and ecosystem services. Climate-smart management is applicable across a range of spatial scales from farm to landscape and catchments, as well as across the scale of governance hierarchy from local to national and regional institutions and policies.
- Slide 23: Practicing CSA is often considered a ‘no-regrets’ strategy in that its benefits of sustainable improvements in agriculture will accrue anyway even if climate change impacts turn out not to be or as severe as expected. While this may be a persuasive argument for the initial steps of adaptation in the immediate to short term, ‘no-regrets’ will only go so far and cannot be an ‘end-all’ without taking a longer term perspective of how climate change might affect the agricultural development pathways in specific contexts. There is a risk in concentrating on short-term measures and the incremental steps of adjusting agricultural practices (e.g. shifting cropping calendars, multiple use of water resources, etc.), and losing sight on longer-term solutions for sustained resilience that call for more difficult choices and trade-offs and, associated with that, heavier financial and human capacity investments.
- Slide 24: It is therefore important to consider climate smart management of agriculture within a broad socio-ecological context. Climate change is one of many drivers of change that influence vulnerability of the agricultural sector and dependent communities. Climate change is a slow variable, and its impacts may be masked by shorter-term perturbations (markets, prices, land conversions, etc.) that take priority in eliciting response. Attendant adaptation and mitigation outcomes of CSA, if widely practiced, provide positive feedback by reducing vulnerabilities to climate change, hence achieving the longer term outcomes of enhancing livelihoods and food security through a more building a more resilient agricultural sector. But for this to become a reality, the technological solutions offered by good science must be supported by enabling policies and institutional and financial arrangements; and be based on an understanding of the socio-cultural-economic contexts to provide insights about barriers to adoption – behavioral or otherwise - and ways of overcoming them.
- Slide 25: Climate-smart agriculture already features in several international development fora and agenda. CSA is central to the development plans of several high-level international bodies (e.g. UN FAO, UN IFAD, World Bank). CSA was touted as the sustainable and food secure pathway in recent discussions at Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development; the First and Second Global Conferences on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change; and at the Agriculture, Landscapes and Livelihoods Day at COP18. The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Meeting on Climate Change, Food and Agriculture in May 2015 articulated the need to situate climate issues in wider sustainable agriculture development agenda, with emphasis on multi-functionality of agriculture linking across adaptation and mitigation - in essence climate smart agriculture.
- Slide 26: The CGIAR Research Program (CRP) on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), through its research projects of piloting climate-smart villages in various countries across the continents, attempts to deal with climate change response in agriculture in a more holistic manner. Interventions deemed to be weather-smart, water-smart, carbon-smart, nitrogen-smart, energy-smart and knowledge-smart are identified with target communities and other stakeholders, tried out and evaluated. Successes are beginning to emerge; the challenge remains for scaling out to other villages and scaling up beyond the village level to encompass larger landscapes where different sets of sustainability issues might emerge and broader-level management, institutional and policy interventions would come into play.
- Slide 27: As the CGIAR moves into a second 15-year phase of CRPs in 2016 a major rethinking emerges that recognizes climate change as a cross-cutting issue that needs to be addressed in meeting the challenges of reducing poverty, improving food and nutrition security for health, and improving natural resource systems and ecosystem services - the three System Level Outcomes. A new CRP structure is expected to have climate change research embedded into a number of ‘Agri-Food systems’ CRPs for the major food types, rather than constituting a separate research program as presently configured. This will foster climate-smart thinking and integrate climate change management actions into the food-systems research programs that strive towards sustainable improvements in agriculture for food and nutritional security while enhancing the ecosystem services of the natural resources that it depends on. Designing and implementing an integrated framework of research programs such as this is challenging and is being pursued.
- Slide 28: Climate change is global, and response to its impacts must be universal. While countries grapple with action plans to deal with climate change, including climate-smart agriculture, there is scope for regional initiatives and cooperation at a number of fronts. Such an initiative has already emerged in Africa, where alliances (such as the Africa Climate-Smart Agriculture Alliance) and partnerships (such as the Climate-Smart Agricultural Partnership for Africa) have been established to foster collaboration on common themes and undertake region-wide programs on common issues related to climate change management. Would this be a model for the Asia-Pacific?