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This document is a summary of climate-smart agriculture.

Coffee-Banana Itercropping is a climate-smart agricultural practice based on indigenous knowledge. It increases farmer incomes, improves resilience to climatic impacts, and sequesters higher amounts of carbon as opposed to monocropping systems. The practice also has positive effects for rural women and household nutrition.

Climate information services (CIS) have emerged as a key input for adaptation decision making aiming to strengthen agricultural livelihoods by managing climate risks. Many pilot projects have been implemented in developing countries to either strengthen existing systems or put in place new systems to deliver climate information to multiple actors. However, scaling up these pilot project-based initiatives in order to contribute further to more sustainable and institutionalized systems remains a challenge. In order to unpack the gap between piloting and successfully up-scaling CIS initiatives, this paper explores the key constraints to and enablers of scaling up CIS by drawing on case studies from research, policy and practice in Africa and South Asia. The evidence contained in this paper was collected through an extensive literature review and from expert opinions elicited during the Ninth International Conference on Community-based Adaptation (CBA9) held in Nairobi in April 2015. We find that transitioning from CIS pilots to systems is possible when scaling up is mainstreamed in the project design stage with a clear financial model for sustainability, includes multiple stakeholders through iterative participatory processes, identifies and engages with pilot-project champions and intermediaries, exploits new communication mechanisms such as information and communication technologies (ICTs), and creates and supports effective partnerships that enable knowledge co-production.

This publication, Guidelines for Climate Proofing Investment in Agriculture, Rural Development, and Food Security, aims to present a step-by-step methodological approach to assist project teams to assess and incorporate climate change adaptation measures into agriculture, rural development, and food security investment projects. While the guidelines focus on the project level, an improved understanding of climate change impacts should also be used to incorporate climate change considerations into agriculture planning and policy at the country level. Though rural development projects include irrigation, rural infrastructure, agriculture production, and natural resource management, this report focuses mainly on irrigation infrastructure projects and agriculture production projects. These were selected because they represent 55% of the ADB's planned and approved investments in the agriculture sector in 2011.

Many smallholder farmers in developing countries are facing food insecurity, poverty, the degradation of local land and water resources, and increasing climatic variability. These vulnerable farmers depend on agriculture both for food and nutrition security and as a way of coping with climate change. If agricultural systems are to meet the needs of these farmers, they must evolve in ways that lead to sustainable increases in food production and at the same time strengthen the resilience of farming communities and rural livelihoods. Bringing about this evolution involves introducing productive climate-resilient and low-emission agricultural practices in farmers' elds and adopting a broad vision of agricultural development that directly connects farmers with policies and programmes that can provide them with suitable incentives to adopt new practices.

Between now and 2050, the world’s population will increase by one-third. Most of these additional 2 billion people will live in developing countries. At the same time, more people will be living in cities. If current income and consumption growth trends continue, FAO estimates that agricultural production will have to increase by 60 percent by 2050 to satisfy the expected demands for food and feed. Agriculture must therefore transform itself if it is to feed a growing global population and provide the basis for economic growth and poverty reduction. Climate change will make this task more difficult under a business-as-usual scenario, due to adverse impacts on agriculture, requiring spiralling adaptation and related costs. To achieve food security and agricultural development goals, adaptation to climate change and lower emission intensities per output will be necessary. This transformation must be accomplished without depletion of the natural resource base. Climate change is already having an impact on agriculture and food security as a result of increased prevalence of extreme events and increased unpredictability of weather patterns. This can lead to reductions in production and lower incomes in vulnerable areas. These changes can also affect global food prices. Developing countries and smallholder farmers and pastoralists in particular are being especially hard hit by these changes. Many of these small-scale producers are already coping with a degraded natural resource base. They often lack knowledge about potential options for adapting their production systems and have limited assets and risk-taking capacity to access and use technologies and financial services. Enhancing food security while contributing to mitigate climate change and preserving the natural resource base and vital ecosystem services requires the transition to agricultural production systems that are more productive, use inputs more efficiently, have less variability and greater stability in their outputs, and are more resilient to risks, shocks and long-term climate variability. More productive and more resilient agriculture requires a major shift in the way land, water, soil nutrients and genetic resources are managed to ensure that these resources are used more efficiently. Making this shift requires considerable changes in national and local governance, legislation, policies and financial mechanisms. This transformation will also involve improving producers’ access to markets. By reducing greenhouse gas emissions per unit of land and/or agricultural product and increasing carbon sinks, these changes will contribute significantly to the mitigation of climate change.

Why do we need climate-smart agriculture? This brief overview answers key questions about Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA): what it is, what makes it different, what are the main elements, and what actions are needed to implement CSA.

Countries vary in their institutional technical and financial abilities to prepare for climate change in agriculture and to balance food security, adaptation, and mitigation goals.Indicators for climate readiness provide guidance to countries and enable monitoring progress. Readiness assessments can enable donors, investors and national decision-makers to identify where investments are needed or likely to be successful. Examples of climate readiness indicators are provided for five work areas: 1. governance and stakeholder engagement, 2. knowledge and information services, 3. climate-smart agricultural strategy and implementation frameworks, 4. national and subnational capabilities and 5. national information and accounting systems.

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is being widely promoted as a solution for food insecurity and climate change adaptation in food systems of sub-Saharan Africa, while simultaneously reducing the rate of greenhouse gas emissions. Governments throughout Africa are writing policies and programs to promote CSA practices despite uncertainty about the ability for practices to meet the triple CSA objectives of CSA. We conducted a systematic review of 175 peer-reviewed and grey literature studies, to gauge the impact of over seventy potential CSA practices on CSA outcomes in Tanzania and Uganda. Using a total of 6,342 observations, we found that practice impacts were highly context (i.e. farming system and location) specific. Nevertheless, practice effect across CSA outcomes generally agreed in direction. While our results suggest that CSA is indeed possible, lack of mitigation data precludes a more conclusive statement. Furthermore, the inclusion of potential adoption rates changes the potential of CSA practices to achieve benefits at scale. Given the uncertainty and variable impacts of practices across regions and outcomes, it is critical for decision makers to prioritize practices based on their desired outcomes and local context.

Alternate wetting and drying (AWD) is a rice management practice that reduces water use by up to 30% and can save farmers money on irrigation and pumping costs. AWD reduces methane emissions by 48% without reducing yield. Efficient nitrogen use and application of organic inputs to dry soil can further reduce emissions. Incentives for adoption of AWD are higher when farmers pay for pump irrigation.