Projects

Synthesis and support to climate-smart agriculture evidence building and scaling

Current
Photo: M. Acosta (IITA)

Project description

To adress the challenge of transitioning to climate-smart agriculture (CSA) at scale, this leadership project hosts the global and strategic coordination of 13 center and/or partners’ led projects where the best and most promising methods, tools and approaches are integrated and applied, in order to develop equitable local adaptation planning and innovative incentives mechanisms for scaling up.

Working across a range of spatial and temporal timescales, these collaborative projects focus on testing, evaluating, promoting and scaling up CSA technologies, practices and institutional approaches that meet famers’ needs.

In this research, projection-based frameworks, models and global and regional scale analyses are used to enable the integration of multidisciplinary knowledge for evaluating CSA, facilitate adaptation planning and decision making. Specific activities will be designed to fill in key portfolio gaps, exploring novel financial instruments/business models for promoting CSA, strengthening science carried out in the Climate-Smart Villages and synthesizing emerging findings.

Some key research questions include:

  • When are cropping system transformations expected during the 21st century for sub-Saharan Africa?
  • What options will farmers have and which of these are best? Which might be the trade-offs and synergies?
  • What are current and future risks facing farmer households in sub-Saharan Africa and what types of farm management strategies or CSA practices can help manage these risks?

Research activities

  • CSA Monitoring Framework. This work entails the development, piloting, and rolling out of an ICT-based robust and standard Monitoring system to be implemented across the global network of Climate-Smart Villages (CSVs)
  • CSV science and synthesis: As part of this activity, new knowledge and data will inform decision-makers, major agencies, and NGOs.
  • Climate security: This multidisciplinary stream of work aims to contribute to conflict prevention and peacebuilding. Sound science, engagement, and key partnerships will generate Evidence, Policy guidance, and Programming tools that improve our understanding of the linkages between land, water, and food in a climate crisis.

Outputs

2017 (East Africa, West Africa, Latin America, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Global)

2019 (Global)

2017: Ghana (Lawra Jirapa)

2018:  Uganda (Hoima); Nicaragua (Tuma la Dalia); Guatemala (Olopa); Honduras (Santa Rita); Colombia (Cauca); Nepal (Bardiya, Mahottari, Nawalparasi); Bangladesh (Barisal, Khulna)

2019: Colombia (Cauca); Ethiopia (Dogoyena); Senegal (Kaffrine)

2020: Guatemala (Olopa); Honduras (Santa Rita)

Gender

This research will develop a gender modile and include it in the Minimum Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) plan for CSVs. Moreover, an ex-ante methodology will be developed to look at gender issues through community lenses to inform more context-specific and tailred CSA interventions.

Partners

Partners include the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), University of Leeds, National University of Ireland (NUI-Galway), the World Bank and Wageningen University & Research (WUR).

Further information

For further information, please contact the project leader Peter Laderach (Alliance Bioversity-CIAT) at p.laderach@cgiar.org.