This presentation summarises the main findings of a synthesis of ESPA research on agriculture, relevant to the question: how can CSA be adapted and scaled up to include the most vulnerable people?

1. Scaling up climate smart
agriculture
Lessons from ESPA research
Dr Marije Schaafsma, University of Southampton, UK
Dr Andrew R. Bell, New York University, USA
Nairobi, 16 January 2018

2. Take 1 minute to think about…
Does your work help to eradicate
poverty and leave no one behind?
Who adopts your interventions?
Do the most vulnerable take up
your solutions?

3. Why?
ESPA is concerned that CSA is developed in an equitable
way that helps all people to move out of poverty
Source: CCAFS Big Facts: Food security

4. Source: European Environment Agency

5. What is climate smart agriculture?
Approach for developing agricultural
strategies, with 3 objectives:
• Food security:
• sustainably increasing crop yields and
productivity
• improving farmer incomes
• Improving adaptation and building
farmers’ resilience to climate change;
• Improving mitigation (when and
where possible):
• reducing and/or removing greenhouse
gas emissions.

6. Macro to micro level approach
• Government: Strong support crucial
• Institutional support
• Climate outlook, met services
• Landscape:
• Policy coordination
• Farm-level: on-farm and off-farm activities
• Upfront costs
• Experimentation – adjusting and adapting to local conditions

7. Aim of report
a synthesis of ESPA evidence on CSA techniques and
strategies:
• Short-term: impacts on poverty and ecosystem services
• Longer-term: is upscaling CSA a pathway out of poverty?
• Recommendations: relevant EBAFOSA actions

8. CSA will not be pro-poor
unless careful attention is paid to make it so,
both in technical implementation
and the financing processes.

9. ESPA evidence base
• 10 projects
Ecolimits
Assets
Schaafsma
SSCCM
Biofuels
ALTER
ACES
RRUF
Frontiers

10. Key findings: short-term impacts
• Commercially valuable commodities are a
key vehicle for the expansion of CSA.
• Climate-smart commodity production is
not inherently pro-poor.
• CSA does not necessarily improve all
aspects of farmers’ wellbeing.

11. Scale up CSA and alleviate poverty?
• Provide incentives to manage upfront costs
• Provide secure tenure and access arrangements
• Provide improved agricultural extension services
• regular and context-specific experimentation
• raising fundamental capacities: literacy, inclusive
household approaches (gender)
• Development of off-farm value-chain opportunities

12. Scale up CSA and alleviate poverty?
• Embed and manage CSA approach at landscape level
• Maintain ecosystem health
• Manage trade-offs, e.g. conservation vs agriculture
• Develop CSA strategy supported by other policies
• Address multi-level pressures: energy
• Develop CSA metrics beyond food production
• Evaluate poverty reduction across multiple dimensions

13. CSA is something of a misnomer; agriculture on its
own cannot be made ‘climate smart for all’.
Resilience is fundamentally a wider livelihoods
problem.

14. Recommendation 1
• Build strong and long-lasting partnerships on CSA
• trust and a common CSA vision
• Involve farmers!
• Powerful stakeholders willing to move things
Source: https://sustainablefoodlab.org/initiatives/climate-smart-agriculture/

15. Recommendation 2
• long-term investment in flexible, adaptive
management of CSA
• Adapting and adjusting – continuously - to climatic variation
and economic, social and ecological conditions and needs
• Datasets, experiments, long-term trials, carbon emission
measurement, poverty status

16. Recommendation 3
• mainstreaming CSA into development
• Policy window of international policy and private sector interest
• IPCC: input to report on Special Report on land in 2019,
contribute reviews to the Special Report on 1.5 C (2018)
• Engage with poverty reduction and climate change agenda in
national policy – MDGS, National Agricultural Policy, NDC
• Funding: climate funds (but consider risks to poverty alleviation
objectives)

17. Recommendation 4
• Develop context-specific pro-poor opportunities
• value addition, processing and packaging
• In collaboration with private sector partners
• More attention to off-farm activities for land-poor
Remember: CSA includes value chain approaches

18. Thank you!
• Comments and questions!
• Contact:
• M.Schaafsma@soton.ac.uk
• ab6175@nyu.edu

19. Take 1 minute to think about…
How can you change your approach/work to
eradicate poverty and leave no one behind?
What can you do to involve the most vulnerable?
How can you improve their vulnerability?
Who do you need to collaborate with to achieve this?