PRIORITIZING

CLIMATE SMART AGRICULTURE

Development of decision support tools

© CIAT © CIMMYT © Reuters

1 January 2013

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• Action at the national level moves from vulnerability

analysis to adaptation

• Governments looking for means to prioritise

adaptation options: from shopping lists to portfolios

of actions

• Climate finance and multi-lateral donors looking for

tools to direct their investment (IFAD, WorldBank,

USAID)

Significant

Demand

Scalable climate smart technologies….

A MAC curve for CSA adaptation

1 January 2013

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• Indicators: what are we trying to achieve with a

climate smart practice, technology, or program?

• Adaptation, mitigation, food security

• CSA Compendium: What options are available?

• Prioritisation: Which options (or portfolio of options)

are worth investing in?

• Partnership: WorldBank, IFAD, FAO, CARE, USAID

• Theme 1, Theme 4, LAM, SA, ICRAF, CIAT

• University of the Andes, Clemsen University

• Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development

(Colombia)

Components of a

CSA prioritisation

tool

CSA Drivers

Food Security & Productivity

Adaptation Mitigation

Performance Areas

Social

Environmental

Economic

Some “simple” indicators to start with..

Social Environmental Economic

Food

security Productivity Employment

Eco-efficiency

Benefit-generation Potential

Product Historical Variability

Adaptation Institutional

Enhancement

Erosion Land Use Changes Benefits Generation

Potential Mitigation Mitigation

CSA Compendium:

What is the evidence behind CSA?

CGIAR expert survey

Meta-analysis of

peer-reviewed lit.

Sept 2012 –

Ongoing

Capture recent

or ongoing research

Evaluate

previously

completed research

Robust evidence base defining the potential ‘what and where’ for CSA

• Includes non-CGIAR research

• Scientifically

verified through peer-review

• Quantitative

assessment of evidence

• Virtual library currently over 1200 peer-reviewed articles in Mendeley

• Subject to publication bias

• Forward looking, state-of-the-art

• Litmus test of

CGIAR engagement

• Mostly in-progress research

• Subject to (self) selection and sampling bias

Crowdsourcing evidence for CSA and

climate resilient practice

Extendabl

e

Searchable

relational

database of

evidence

supplied by

users

Bioversity, CCAFS, & ICRAF

www.agrobiodiversity.org/refar

m/

Quantitative assessment of Farm-level CSA

evidence

(Meta-analysis)

Practice

Potential

articles located

(#)

Articles matching

selection criteria

(#)

Obs. in current

database (#)

Integrated

nutrient

management

162 57 1332

Agroforestry 129 44 414

Manure

management

159 18 408

Pasture

management

166 25 667

Total1 >3000 1276 -

ICRAF, CIAT

1Includes a range of practices

Virtual library of peer-reviewed CSA articles

`

>1200

paper

s

1,276

Searchabl

e

FRE

E!

ICRAF, CIAT

CSA Compendium

Informs CSA prioritization tool

• Overcome barrier of lack of information about possible CSA options in a given context

Informs future research agendas

• Identify gaps in the literature based on CSA pillar, CSA practice, geographic region, etc.

Knowledge Hub for CSA researchers and practitioners

• Crowdsourcing to develop database, with reliability of data marked

CSA Prioritization Tool

• Users: National policy makers, Ministries, Donors

• Objective: Meet demand to move from shopping lists of CSA options to best-bet portfolios

• Stakeholder driven: inclusive participatory process

• Simple: timeline 3-6 months

• Flexible: process can be modified based on level of detail desired and constraints in data, capacity, time, and resources, and still provide decision support

• Capture Tradeoffs between CSA pillars and social, environmental, economic dimensions of pillars

• Barriers and Constraints to adoption addressed related to portfolio options to improve implementation

CSA Prioritization Tool - Process

Assess tradeoffs

• for each practice between

indicators of CSA pillars and

social, economic, and

environmental domains

• between practices within a

portfolio

Pilots will be conducted starting mid-2014 in Mali, Viet Nam, and Colombia

The Climate Smart Agriculture Decision Support Platform was constructed to provide access to a broad database of CSA practices that have been tested around the world. This information is aimed at aiding endeavors such as identifying what CSA options exist for different contexts and gaps in research. We welcome you to search our database and contribute your own information to the compendium. Our prioritization tool we developed to identify best options for specific contexts.

Latin America

Colombia

- All -

- All -

- All -

- All - Journal Articles

CSA Compendium Search Results Indicators

PRO Productivity (PRO)

EEF Eco-Efficiency (EEF)

FBP Financial Benefit Potential (FBP)

HVP Historic Variability in Production (HVP)

ERS Erosion (ERS)

RES Resilience Building (RES)

LUC Land Use Change (LUC)

MIT Mitigation (MIT)

EMP Employment (EMP)

EEF HVP

CSA Compendium Search Results

EEF HVP EEF HVP

Indicators

PRO Productivity (PRO)

EEF Eco-Efficiency (EEF)

FBP Financial Benefit Potential (FBP)

HVP Historic Variability in Production (HVP)

ERS Erosion (ERS)

RES Resilience Building (RES)

LUC Land Use Change (LUC)

MIT Mitigation (MIT)

EMP Employment (EMP)

CSA Compendium Search Results CSA Compendium Search Results

EEF HVP EEF HVP

Indicators

PRO Productivity (PRO)

EEF Eco-Efficiency (EEF)

FBP Financial Benefit Potential (FBP)

HVP Historic Variability in Production (HVP)

ERS Erosion (ERS)

RES Resilience Building (RES)

LUC Land Use Change (LUC)

MIT Mitigation (MIT)

EMP Employment (EMP)

CSA Compendium Search Results

CSA Compendium Search Results

Dimensions of

CSA Pillars CSA Pillars

Practice CBA Quality

1 Silvopastoral Systems 1.5 2.11

2 Efficient Use of Fertilizer 1.4 2.87

3 Improved Forages 1.3 2.85

4 Biogas 1.2 2.36

5 Grass-Legume Association 1.2 2.11

6 Water harvest structure 1.2 2.08

7 Silage, haylage and nutritional blocks 1 2.01

9 Early warning systems 1 1.89

Ranked List of Practices

The Enabling Environment – AgClim

Readiness • Enabling governance and business contexts. Governments need

to establish an environment where farmers and the farming and food services sector can operate productively.

• Functioning agriculture and food sectors. One pre-condition for scaling up climate-smart agriculture is a functioning agriculture and food sector.

• Supportive national climate change policies and institutions. Governments need to recognise the general climate change challenge and put in place mechanisms to support climate change action and to inform the citizenry about climate change impacts and options to address the challenge.

• Enabling policies and institutions for building climate resilience in agriculture and in rural livelihoods. A range of policies and institutions need to be in place to support the scaling up of climate smart agriculture.

• Attention to the mitigation challenge in agriculture. Climate-smart agricultural initiatives should at least recognise the emission challenges in agriculture.

Conclusions

• Simple approaches that can be applied at national levels

to make complex decisions

• A challenge to strike the balance: practical, actionable

information for very complex range of issues

• Participatory processes for prioritization enable buy-in for

implementation, but also fills key information gaps

• Need for holistic view: indicators, CSA compendium,

prioritization tools

• Solve two problems in one:

• Prioritize CSA

• Generate more data and evidence on CSA

• We are looking for pilots to trial this out in 2014!