Climate-Smart Agriculture: Smallholder Adoption and Implications for Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation

Climate, Energy and Tenure Division

Climate-Smart Agriculture: Smallholder Adoption and Implications for Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation

Year of publication 2011

Author Climate, Energy and Tenure Division

Product type Book (stand-alone)

Edition 1

Full item page

Synopsis (short abstract) There are a wide range of agriculture-based practices and technologies that have the potential to increase food production and the adaptive capacity of the food production system, as well as reduce emissions or enhance carbon storage in agricultural soils and biomass. However, even where such synergies exist, capturing them may entail significant costs, particularly for smallholders in the short-term. In this paper, we provide a brief review of the adaptation and mitigation benefits from vario us practices, and then focus in detail on empirical evidence concerning costs and barriers to adoption, both from household and project-level data. Findings indicate that up-front investment costs can be a significant barrier to adoption for certain investments and practices, and furthermore, the evidence also supports the hypotheses that opportunity and transactions costs across a wide range of investments and practices. Additionally, potential synergies between food security, adaptation an d mitigation opportunities, as well as costs, can differ substantially across different agro-ecological zones, climate regimes, and historical land use patterns.

Language English

Related items

Showing items related by metadata.

Document

Climate-Smart Agriculture: capturing the synergies among mitigation, adaptation and food security
Emerging evidence from Malawi
2013

Also available in:

No results found.

This brief provides emerging evidence from the implementation of the Climate-Smart Agriculture project in Malawi. We analyze factors governing farmers’ decision to adopt adaptation strategies and evaluate the potential impact of adoption on crop productivity by using multivariate econometric regression. We also try to uncover distributional impact, particularly where these households are heterogeneous on key dimensions such as land holding, gender and geographical region. The findings suggest positive synergies between adaptation strategies and food security. However, some caution needs to be taken given the interdependence of practices as well as the heterogeneity of impacts across farm size, gender and geographical region.
Document

Climate-Smart Agriculture: capturing the synergies among mitigation, adaptation and food security
Emerging issues in the northern mountainous region of Viet Nam
2013

Also available in:

No results found.

This brief provides an update on the Climate-Smart Agriculture project in the Northern Mountainous Region of Viet Nam. In particular, it provides some key information on this area to highlight the importance of climate change, agriculture and food security.
Document

Climate-Smart Agriculture: capturing the synergies among mitigation, adaptation and food security
Policy processes in Malawi, Zambia and Viet Nam
2013

Also available in:

No results found.

This brief provides an overview of relevant climate change and agricultural policies in Malawi, Zambia and Viet Nam. It presents some initial findings from the mapping of policy decision-making processes and key institutions/stakeholders which is currently done within the Climate-Smart Agriculture project.