Theme 4.1: Linking Knowledge with Action

Explore and jointly apply approaches and methods that enhance knowledge-to-action linkages with a wide range of partners at local, regional and global levels

Agricultural production and resource management under climate change demand new ways of thinking about risk, about vulnerability and about resilience. It requires us to question what is needed in terms of policies, institutions and governance to support these changes, rather than to maintain the status quo.

This work also provides an integrative function for CCAFS stakeholder engagement from local to global levels, both in terms of setting research agendas and providing forums for discussing emerging results and options for action. The means of engagement, and not just the development of tools, will be key to nurturing an ongoing and evolving dialogue with a range of stakeholders. Interfacing closely with policy processes and identifying policy ‘windows of opportunity’ at global and regional levels and in the countries selected for detailed work will be key impact strategies.

Research questions include:

• What are the plausible futures encompassing interactions between changes in climate and other key drivers of agricultural systems and food security?
• What are the key factors causing vulnerability to climate change and climate variability among agricultural and food systems and the people who depend on them, and how might this vulnerability change in the future?
• What boundary-spanning objects and actions (e.g. partnership-building and policy-engagement processes, communications and capacity-building approaches) can improve the likelihood that CCAFS-generated knowledge will result in actions that contribute to sustainable poverty reduction?
• What are the main options to deal with climate-change impacts, where are the key policy opportunities and who are the key decision makers?