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Evaluating the impacts of promoting coherence between disaster risk reduction, climate action and social protection in Malawi

Baseline analysis and programmatic implications of a Farmer Field School approach









Daidone, S., Pellegrini, F. & Sitko, N. 2023. Evaluating the impacts of promoting coherence between disaster risk reduction, climate action and social protection in Malawi. Baseline analysis and programmatic implications of a Farmer Field School approach. Rome, FAO.




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    Leveraging social protection to advance climate-smart agriculture: evidence from Malawi 2021
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    In many developing countries the adoption of climate sustainable practices is hindered by resource and risk barriers. This paper assesses the interactions between participation in Malawi’s largest public works programme, the Malawi Social Action Fund (MASAF), and three widely promoted climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices. The underlying hypotheses to be tested are: (a) that participation in the MASAF programme reduce both the budget and the risk constraints to the adoption of sustainable management practices; and (b) the joint treatment effect of MASAF and CSA increases household farms’ productivity and welfare. Drawing on three waves of national panel household survey data, we find that participation in MASAF significantly increases the probability that farm households adopt all the CSA practices considered for this study.
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    Mainstreaming climate-related disaster risk reduction in eastern Africa’s agriculture and food sectors 2017
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    The eastern Africa sub-region has recurrently experienced climate-induced food insecurity crises. Their magnitude and frequency have been rising. To illustrate, the number of people affected by droughts has been multiplied seven folds, between the 1980 average decadal baseline and 2011. Floods and landslides also present rising impacts. To address the issues, countries have set up institutions for disaster risk management (DRM). However, prevailing hindrances affect their effectiveness. This rep ort thus recommends seven main priority intervention aspects for climate resilient agriculture and food sectors in the sub-region: (1) making early warning effective for early action in agriculture; (2) addressing population dynamics and constraints on natural resources; (3) developing risk-informed sector-specific DRM plans; (4) financial resource allocation and mobilization; (5) linking the development and humanitarian efforts; (6) transcending socio-cultural barriers; and (7) agro-ecologica lly appropriate infrastructure development and technology transfer. Otherwise, the magnitude of climate-induced food crises will escalate to unbearable levels.
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    Book (series)
    Leveraging social protection programmes to advance climate-smart agriculture in Malawi
    FAO Agricultural Development Economics Policy Brief No. 21
    2020
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    This brief details the three functional elements of climate vulnerability: risk exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity, in order to assess the interactions between participation in Malawi’s largest public works programme, the Malawi Social Action Fund (MASAF) and three widely promoted climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices. Using three waves of national panel household survey data, we find that participation in MASAF significantly increases the likelihood that farm households adopt CSA practices. This suggests that MASAF participation improves farmers’ adaptive capacity by reducing direct and indirect constraints to adopting climate adaptive farm practices. Moreover, we empirically demonstrate that the joint treatment effect of MASAF participation in combination with the adoption of CSA practices generates greater and more consistent positive impacts on farm welfare than the standalone impacts of the treatments. This is indicative of synergies between social protection and agricultural interventions. Finally, we show that under extreme dry conditions the short term standalone adoption of CSA practices does not generate positive impacts on farm and household outcomes. However, when combined with MASAF participation, and particularly when the CSA practice is adopted for multiple years, evidence of positive impacts is found. These findings provide empirical evidence on the importance of multi-sectoral approaches that link agricultural interventions with social protection to address the climate vulnerability of resource poor farmers.

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