Feeding the projected 9 billion people in 2050 requires a radical transformation of agriculture over the next four decades. To tackle this challenge, we need to grow more food without exacerbating environmental problems and we need to grow more food while coping with a changing climate.
Our Vision
The vision for the Climate-Smart Agriculture Flagship is that, by 2025, public agencies and civil society organizations at national and sub-national level are working with the private sector to promote equitable climate-smart agriculture adoption by 30 million farmers, at least 40% of whom are women, to strengthen their adaptive capacity and food security.
Climate-smart agriculture is agriculture that sustainably increases productivity, enhances adaptive capacity, and reduces or removes greenhouse gas emissions where possible.
At the local level, it shields farmers from the adverse effects of climate change, improves farm yields and household incomes, for stronger and more resilient communities. At the national level, it helps deliver food security and development goals, while reducing emissions.
Research Areas
Helping 30 million farmers adapt to climate change and become more food-secure by 2025, will potentially require entirely new systems, crops, value chains, financial mechanisms and incentives as well as support networks and channels for information exchange. This Flagship vigorously pursues this vision through the following three research areas.
Improved technologies and practices for climate-smart agriculture
Climate-smart villages are essential tools for the work being carried out under the Climate-Smart Agriculture Flagship. They are places where integrated crop, livestock, fish, agroforestry and natural resource management options are tested in a participatory manner. They offer a platform for CCAFS to come together with partners to scale up climate-smart agriculture investment and adoption. Click here to learn more
This research focuses on different climate-smart agricultural options and has several different aims, including:
- The evaluation of new and existing climate-smart and gender sensitive agricultural options
- The co-development of new portfolios of technologies, practices and information systems
- Understanding the barriers to adoption of different climate-smart agricultural options
- Modelling and priority setting
- Building evidence of the benefits of climate-smart agriculture
This research is primarily carried out in climate-smart villages, where CCAFS works jointly with local partners across all five CCAFS regions.
Methods for equitable local adaptation planning and governance
This works entails the development of innovative approaches and tools to support:
- Climate-smart decision making processes
- Local adaptation planning
- Climate-smart extension services and management systems which have better access to and make better use of information and communication technologies
- Linkages between local, regional and national policy needs and enabling actors
Innovative incentives and mechanisms for scaling up and out
To reach 30 million farmers by 2025, all climate-smart villages will be linked to strategies for scaling up and out. To reach 30 million farmers by 2025, all climate-smart villages will be linked to strategies for scaling up and out. To this end, this research focuses on:
- Incentive mechanisms for climate-smart agriculture such as financing (micro-finance, grounding international climate finance etc.) and linkages with national policy
- Certification vehicles and value chains (public-private partnerships and new business models for climate-smart agriculture)
Key Partners
Through collaboration with the commodity-focused CGIAR Research Programs, CCAFS is helping to set the agenda for the next generation of climate-smart crops and animals. Likewise, collaboration with systems-focused CGIAR Research Programs is helping to bring about system-wide, as well as on-farm, adaptation.
Outside of CGIAR, the Climate-Smart Agricultural Practices team collaborates with major agencies such as the African CSA Alliance, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the World Bank, USAID, national agricultural agencies, local and national government, and the private sector.
Flagship 1 also collaborate with the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction, the University of Leeds, the University of Maine and numerous local-level partners who play a pivotal role on the ground in climate-smart villages.
These partners help us to develop the tools needed to prioritise, plan and bring climate-smart agricultural practices to scale across landscapes, countries, regions and the globe. Involving these partners directly in the formulation of research questions and generation of evidence on what works is a key strategy for achieving impact.