Publications

The climate-smart agriculture (CSA) concept reflects an ambition
to improve the integration of agriculture development and climate
responsiveness. CSA aims to achieve food security and broader
development goals under a changing climate and increasing food
demand. CSA initiatives can sustainably increase productivity,
enhance resilience, and reduce/remove greenhouse gases (GHGs),
but require planning to address trade-offs and synergies between
the three CSA pillars, namely: productivity, adaptation, and
mitigation(1). The priorities of different countries and stakeholders
can converge towards achieving more efficient, effective, and equitable food systems that address challenges in environmental,
social, and economic dimensions across productive landscapes.
While the CSA concept is new, and still evolving, many of the
practices that make up CSA already exist worldwide and are used
by farmers to cope with different types of production risks(2).
Mainstreaming CSA requires critical stocktaking of ongoing and
promising practices for the future, and of institutional and financial
enablers for CSA adoption and scaling. This country profile
provides a snapshot of a baseline created to initiate discussions on
entry points for investing in CSA at scale in Malawi.