Climate-smart agriculture: perspectives and framings

This paper offers a systematic analysis of the concepts and contexts that frame the climate-smart agriculture (CSA) discourse in the academic and policy literature. Documents (n?=?113) related to CSA and published in peer-reviewed journals, books, working papers, and scientific reports from 2004 to 2016 were reviewed. Three key trends emerged from the analysis: studies are biased towards global policy agendas; research focuses on scientific and technical issues; and the integration of mitigation, adaptation, and food security (the three pillars of CSA) is becoming a popular scholarly solution. Findings suggest that CSA is a fairly new concept used to describe a range of adaptation and mitigation practices without a specific set of criteria. Although CSA is often framed around the three pillars, the underlying issues constructing the discourse differ at global, developing, and developed country scales. Although there is increasing research on developing countries, particularly in relation to how CSA can transform smallholder agriculture, there is a paucity of research documenting the experiences from developed countries. The findings suggest that research on CSA needs to move beyond solely focussing on scientific approaches and only in certain geographical contexts. If CSA is to be applicable for farmers across the globe, then cross-disciplinary research that is underpinned by broad socio-economic and political contexts is essential to understand how differences in narratives might affect implementation on-the-ground in both developing and developed countries.

POLICY RELEVANCE

Although policy makers are increasingly supportive of the climate-smart agriculture (CSA) approach, the rhetoric has largely been developed on the basis of scientific and technical arguments. The political implications of varying perspectives have resulted in a growing divide between how developing and developed countries frame solutions to the impacts of climate change on agriculture under the 2015 Paris Agreement. Different framings are part of the explanation for why the scope of CSA is being rethought, with the scientific community redirecting attention to seeking a separate work programme under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The current policy framing of CSA will give no new policy direction unless it grounds itself in the smallholder farmer and civil society contexts.     

Adaptation and poverty reduction in Mozambique: an opportunity for developing countries to lead§

Climate change disproportionately impacts the world’s poorest countries. A recent World Bank report highlighted that over 100 million people are at risk of falling into extreme poverty as a result of climate change. There is currently a lack of information about how to simultaneously address climate change and poverty. Climate change challenges provide an opportunity for those impacted most to come up with new and innovative technologies and solutions. This article uses an example from Mozambique where local and international partners are working side-by-side, to show how developing countries can simultaneously address climate change and poverty reduction using an ecosystem-based adaptation approach. Using ecosystem-based adaptation, a technique that uses the natural environment to help societies adapt to climate change, developing countries can lead the way to improve climate adaptation globally. This paradigm shift would help developing countries become leaders in ecosystem-based adaptation and green infrastructure techniques and has implications for climate policy worldwide.

POLICY RELEVANCE

The Paris Agreement resulting from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 21st Conference of Parties (COP 21) in December 2015 was rightly lauded for its global commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions. However, COP 21 was also historic because of its call for non-party stakeholders to address climate change, inclusion of a global goal of ‘enhancing adaptive capacity, strengthening resilience and reducing vulnerability’, and the United States’ commitment of $800 million to adaptation funding. The combination of recognizing the need for new stakeholders to commit to climate change adaptation, the large impact climate change will have on the developing world, and providing access to funds for climate change adaptation creates a unique opportunity for developing countries to pave the way in adaptation policies in practices. Currently, developing countries are creating National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) for the UNFCCC. Through including a strong component of ecosystem-based adaptation in NAPs, developing countries can shape their countries’ policies, improve local institutions and governments, and facilitate a new generation of innovative leaders. Lessons learned in places like Mozambique can help lead the way in other regions facing similar climatic risks.     

Assessing indigenous knowledge systems and climate change adaptation strategies in agriculture: A case study of Chagaka Village,Chikhwawa, Southern Malawi

In Malawi, production from subsistence rain fed agriculture is highly vulnerable to climate change and variability. In response to the adverse effects of climate change and variability, a National Adaptation Programme of Action is used as framework for implementing adaptation programmes. However, this framework puts limited significance on indigenous knowledge systems (IKS). In many parts of the world, IKS have shown potential in the development of locally relevant and therefore sustainable adaptation strategies. This study was aimed at assessing the role of IKS in adaptation to climate change and variability in the agricultural sector in a rural district of Chikhwawa, southern Malawi. The study used both qualitative data from focus group and key informant interviews and quantitative data from household interviews and secondary data to address the research objectives. The study established that the local communities are able to recognise the changes in their climate and local environment. Commonly mentioned indicators of changing climatic patterns included delayed and unpredictable onset of rainfall, declining rainfall trends, warming temperatures and increased frequency of prolonged dry spells. An analysis of empirical data corroborates the people’s perception. In addition, the community is able to use their IKS to adapt their agricultural systems to partially offset the effects of climate change. Like vulnerability to climate change, IKS varies over a short spatial scale, providing locally relevant adaptation to impacts of climate change. This paper therefore advocates for the integration of IKS in programmes addressing adaptation to climate change and vulnerability. This will serve to ensure sustainable and relevant adaptation strategies.     

IUPA: a tool for the evaluation of the general usefulness of practices for adaptation to climate change and variability

A prototype multi-purpose index is proposed for use in the evaluation of practices for adaptation to climate variability and change. The Index of Usefulness of Practices for Adaptation (IUPA) allows the user to assign weights and scores to a set of user-defined evaluation criteria. Individual criterion scores are aggregated into a final index value. Both the final value and the individual parameter scores provide useful information for improved decision making in the context of climate change. An innovative aspect of IUPA is that guidance is given to the user through the inclusion of recommendations on evaluation criteria and criterion-specific weight factors. These have been defined by a panel of experts from the Latin-American and Caribbean Region (LAC). Application of the index is demonstrated for an existing adaptation practice from the Coquimbo Region, Chile. The IUPA tool is recommended for use in the evaluation of adaptation practices in their design, implementation and post-implementation phase. It is practical for a quick first assessment or when limited financial resources are available, making the tool especially useful for practitioners in the developing world. The index is flexible both from the perspective of its construction and use. Additional expert opinions can easily be included in the future versions of the tool.     

Climate change scenario planning in Alaska's National Parks: Stakeholder involvement in the decision-making process

This article studies the participation of stakeholders in climate change decision-making in Alaska's National Parks. We place stakeholder participation within literatures on environmental and climate change decision-making. We conducted participant observation and interviews in two planning workshops to investigate the decision-making process, and our findings are three-fold. First, the inclusion of diverse stakeholders expanded climate change decision-making beyond National Park Service (NPS) institutional constraints. Second, workshops of the Climate Change Scenario Planning Project (CCSPP) enhanced institutional understandings of participants' attitudes towards climate change and climate change decision-making. Third, the geographical context of climate change influences the decision-making process. As the first regional approach to climate change decision-making within the NPS, the CCSPP serves as a model for future climate change planning in public land agencies. This study shows how the participation of stakeholders can contribute to robust decisions, may move climate change decision-making beyond institutional barriers, and can provide information about attitudes towards climate change decision-making.     

Can we learn from the past? Towards better analogies and historical inference in society-environmental change research

In light of the challenges posed by contemporary environmental changes, interest in past environmental impacts and societies’ responses to them is burgeoning. The main strength of such research lies in its ability to analyze completed society-environment interactions. Scholars have argued that such analyses can improve our understanding of present challenges and offer useful lessons to guide adaptation responses. Yet despite considerable differences between past and present societies, our inherently limited knowledge of the past and our changing understanding of it, much of this research uses historical antecedents uncritically, assuming that past societal impacts and responses are directly analogous to contemporary ones. We argue that this approach is unsound both methodologically and theoretically, thus drawing insights that might offer an erroneous course of action.To illustrate the challenges in drawing historical analogies, we outline several fundamental differences between past and present societies as well as broader limitations of historical research. Based on these points, we argue that scholars who apply historical inference in their work should do so critically, while reflecting on the objectives of learning from the past and the limitations of this process. We suggest a number of ways to improve past-present analogies, such as defining more explicitly what we can learn from the past, clarifying the rationale for using the analogy, and reducing the number of variables compared between past and present.     

Everyday Adaptation: Theorizing climate change adaptation in daily life

Climate science to date demonstrates that natural and human systems must urgently adapt. Adaptation refers to changes in societies and ecological systems as they respond to both actual and anticipated impacts of the changing climate. While adaptation is not limited to the level of planning and policy, existing adaptation practice privileges institutional action. We argue that the definition of adaptation should be broadened to include the small, incremental changes made in our daily lives to accommodate the shifting ecologies in which we live. Drawing on critical adaptation research and our own ethnographic fieldwork in the Global South, we define everyday adaptation as the shifted ways a person works, eats, lives and thinks in response to climate realities, rather than the hardening of coastlines or the relocation of vulnerable structures. We integrate and build on existing scholarship on adaptation and the everyday to theorize the logics of everyday, hyperlocal adaptation. This hyperlocal scale is a critical component of any definition of adaptation and a useful lens for studying the way much of the global population adapts and will continue to adapt their lives to climate change. We offer two theoretical components of adaptation revealed by the everyday - adaptation labor and value adaptation – as lenses to see changes in everyday action. Through considering hyperlocal action, we then identify and explore four logics of everyday adaptation actions: lifestyle stability, socio-ecological reactivity, livelihood flexibility, and community capacity. Everyday adaptations are limited by individuals’ capacity to adapt and thereby determine the longevity, livability, and quality of life of places on the frontlines of climate change. We argue for understanding the aggregate effects of everyday adaptation in order to better align the actions of those living with climate change in their everyday lives and the large-scale adaptation projects aiming to protect them.     

Climate discourses as barriers to rights-based adaptive social protection: How historical politics shape Ethiopia’s climate-smart safety net

A rights-based approach to ‘adaptive social protection’ holds promise as a policy measure to address structural dimensions of vulnerability to climate change such as inequality and marginalisation, yet it has been failing to gain traction against production and growth-oriented interventions. Through the lens of Ethiopia’s flagship Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP), we trace the role of climate discourses in impeding progress towards socially transformative outcomes, despite the importance of social protection for building resilience. We argue that intertwining narratives of moral leadership and green growth associated with Ethiopia’s national climate strategy shape how the PSNP is rendered ‘climate-smart’. These narratives, however, are embedded within politics that have historically underpinned the country’s drive for modernisation and growth-oriented policies, particularly in dealing with food insecurity. Like pre-existing narratives on development and the environment, they rationalise the presence of a strong central State and its control over natural resources and rural livelihoods. The PSNP is thus conditioned to favour technocratic, productivist approaches to adapting to climate change that may help reproduce, rather than challenge the entrenched politics at the root of vulnerability. Ultimately, this case study demonstrates how climate discourses risk diluting core rights-based dimensions of social protection, contradicting efforts to address the structural dimensions of vulnerability to climate change.     

Adaptive capacity within tropical marine protected areas – Differences between men- and women-headed households

Households within tropical coastal communities face a multitude of stressors related to environmental, social and economic change. To minimise negative impacts on households, a priority is to understand and if possible build adaptive capacity to enable adjustment to both extant, and anticipated stressors. Adaptive capacity may not be equally distributed across households due to social differences and inequalities, including gender. In this study we sought to understand whether the factors underlying adaptive capacity differ between men- and women-headed households across three marine protected areas (MPAs) in Zanzibar, Tanzania. Adaptive capacity was significantly higher in men-headed households compared to women-headed households between different MPAs as a whole, however significant differences were not found for men and women-headed households within the MPAs. The factors underlying adaptive capacity were investigated through boosted regression trees, a relatively novel approach within the field, and found to be similar between men and women counterparts. These factors were agency, material conditions, low ecosystem dependence, education, occupational multiplicity and needs satisfaction (i.e. a poverty indicator) which was singularly important in women-headed households. While the factors themselves were similar in men and women–headed households, gendered differences were found regarding differing levels in the identified factors. Accordingly, the processes that underly the differences found should be addressed within initiatives seeking to understand and build adaptive capacity.     

“一带一路”沿线国家的自主贡献中水资源相关适应措施评估

“一带一路”沿线地区气候灾害类型多样,分布广泛,其中水资源短缺和洪涝灾害频发等水资源问题是“一带一路”沿线国家的主要气候风险之一。文中对“一带一路”沿线国家提交的国家自主贡献（NDC）中提出的水资源相关适应措施进行了分析评估。结果表明,气候变化及水资源相关风险已经受到了“一带一路”沿线国家的普遍关注,大部分国家都或多或少提出了针对性的适应措施,如优化水资源管理、提高水资源利用效率、强化监测预警、增加基础建设等。然而目前还存在一些不足之处,包括：以中东欧国家为主的部分“一带一路”沿线国家NDCs中缺乏适应相关的内容;西亚/中东和中亚地区对于风险关注的范围不够全面,缺乏对未来潜在洪水风险的评估和预案;在中亚、南亚和中东等水争端问题突出的地区缺乏合适的国际合作机制;大部分国家缺少对水环境的关注。为提高“一带一路”沿线国家气候适应能力,构建完善的气候适应体系,建议完善国家自主贡献报告、建立国际合作机制,增加对气候变化研究的关注和投入,保障“一带一路”建设绿色可持续发展。