The climate-smart village approach: framework of an integrative strategy for scaling up adaptation options in agriculture

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Increasing weather risks threaten agricultural production systems and food security across the world. Maintaining agricultural growth while minimizing climate shocks is crucial to building a resilient food production system and meeting developmental goals in vulnerable countries. Experts have proposed several technological, institutional, and policy interventions to help farmers adapt to current and future weather variability and to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This paper presents the climate-smart village (CSV) approach as a means of performing agricultural research for development that robustly tests technological and institutional options for dealing with climatic variability and climate change in agriculture using participatory methods. It aims to scale up and scale out the appropriate options and draw out lessons for policy makers from local to global levels. The approach incorporates evaluation of climate-smart technologies, practices, services, and processes relevant to local climatic risk management and identifies opportunities for maximizing adaptation gains from synergies across different interventions and recognizing potential maladaptation and trade-offs. It ensures that these are aligned with local knowledge and link into development plans. This paper describes early results in Asia, Africa, and Latin America to illustrate different examples of the CSV approach in diverse agroecological settings. Results from initial studies indicate that the CSV approach has a high potential for scaling out promising climate-smart agricultural technologies, practices, and services. Climate analog studies indicate that the lessons learned at the CSV sites would be relevant to adaptation planning in a large part of global agricultural land even under scenarios of climate change. Key barriers and opportunities for further work are also discussed.

Uptake of Climate-Smart Agricultural Technologies and Practices: Actual and Potential Adoption Rates in the Climate-Smart Village Site of Mali

“…Based on the principles of participatory action research, the CSV approach enables farmers to pick practices and technologies that meet their local specific needs and allows drawing lessons on agricultural technologies and practices to inform policy decisions from local to global levels [5]. The paper by Aggarwal et al [5] provides a comprehensive overview of the CCAFS CSV approach.In Mali, the CSV approach has since 2011 been used to test and validate many CSA technologies and practices (including drought tolerant crop varieties, micro-dosing, organic manure, intercropping, contour farming, farmer managed natural regeneration, agroforestry and climate information services) with the participation of farmers. Several authors have reported successful results of CSA technologies tested and their implications for local food security [6-9] and income [10].…”

“…The CSV approach enables ground-breaking research on agricultural technologies and practices to define their potential to deliver on the food security, adaptation and mitigation goals of CSA. Based on the principles of participatory action research, the CSV approach enables farmers to pick practices and technologies that meet their local specific needs and allows drawing lessons on agricultural technologies and practices to inform policy decisions from local to global levels [5]. The paper by Aggarwal et al [5] provides a comprehensive overview of the CCAFS CSV approach.…”

Analysing trade-offs in adaptation decision-making—agricultural management under climate change in Finland and Sweden

“…The general call for climate change adaptation, and particularly for agricultural adaptation management, makes it pertinent to understand the complexity of adaptation decision-making-in order to manage adaptation in a sustainable manner (e.g. Aggarwal et al 2018). This study's scientific contribution lies in addressing the current lack of studies focusing on adaptation trade-offs as well as to support theoretical development in the field.…”

“…There is a recognized need to seize adaptation synergies and minimize trade-offs in the implementation of sustainability policies and measures in order to create climate resilient pathways (Aggarwal et al 2018;Roy et al 2018). Adaptation measures that potentially involve maladaptation (Juhola et al 2016;Magnan et al 2016) inherently also involve a trade-off between the intended positive effect of the adaptation measure and the unintended negative outcome.…”

Weathering the storm or storming the norms? Moving gender equality forward in climate-resilient agriculture

“…In this and other cases, CSA practices and technologies have been found to improve productivity and income for participating farmers while reducing risks, but contributions of the CSA approach to gender equality and empowerment within households are not well understood. In some cases, CSA may entrench gender inequalities, while in others, women's empowerment is a factor in CSA adoption (see Aggarwal et al 2018;Haapala 2018;Mutenje et al 2019). The second group of articles in this issue explores methodologies and approaches to address this knowledge gap.…”