Overview of the 2016 Annual Trends and

Outlook ReportA l e x D e P i n t o , SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW

ENVIRONMENT AND PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY DIVISION

INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE, WASHINGTON, DC

The Background

• A growing amount of evidence indicates that climate change will play an increasingly important role in Africa, especially in agriculture

• Rising temperatures and increased frequency of extreme dry and wet years are expected to slow progress toward increasing the productivity of crop and livestock systems and improving food security, particularly in Africa south of the Sahara

The Challenge

• Uncertainty surrounding the impacts of climate change delays and reduce the actions and activities that aim to adapt to and mitigate it

• Spatial heterogeneity and uncertainty of climate change impacts make it difficult to identify proper responses particularly when some of the impacts are likely to occur in the longer run

Climate-smart AgricultureCSA is an umbrella term that includes many approaches, built upon geographically-specific solutions aiming at making the agricultural sector better suited to handle the challenges of a new climate

Climate-smart Agriculture

CSA provides a framework for decision-making at the farm and policy level.

It offers guiding principles to identify technologies, management tools, and policies that enable farmers to meet the challenges of producing under changing climate regimes by concurrently considering the three pillars and their trade-offs

Growing Body of Literature

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2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

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Source: Google scholar

Purpose of the Annual Trends and Outlook Report

• Takes stock of current knowledge on the effects of climate change

• Reviews existing evidence of the effectiveness of various CSA strategies, and

• Provides examples of CSA-based practices and tools helpful for developing evidence-based policies and programs

The Report Contains

•Macro-level results• State-of-the-art estimates of the

effects of climate change• Effects of widespread adoption of

CSA• Effects on trade

The Report Contains

•Broad perspectives to identify steps forwards•Mixed Crop-livestock Systems• Ecosystem-based Adaptation for

Sustainable Development•Gender-sensitive, Climate-smart

Agriculture For Improved Nutrition

The Report Contains

•Case studies with localized results•Role of insurance instruments and

weather index insurance•Precision agriculture•Adoption rates of supposedly

beneficial practices

Findings

All the evidence suggests that CSA can contribute to meeting the challenges posed by climate change

….it’s not a panacea

Findings

The effectiveness of CSA will depend on the political will and capacity to induce adoption and promote the implementation of:

• New, CSA-related, training programs for extension agents

• Policies and strategies that treat smallholder farmers as entrepreneurs

• Payment for ecosystem services• Implement agriculture risk management measures • Full recognition of the interlinkages across gender,

climate change, agriculture, and nutrition

CSA: What Is really new?

• The first two pillars are not controversial and taken by themselves not new.

• Carbon as a commodity is new. Traditionally carbon was important only for its relation with soil fertility

• However, for CSA reduction of emissions is just a co-benefit: increasing sustainable productivity requires a more efficient use of inputs and therefore a likely reduction of emission intensity (emissions per unit of output).

CSA: What Is really new?

• Reinforce the importance of a multi-objective approach in agricultural policies

• Potentially can initiate dialogs that rarely happen across ministries

• However, the transition to CSA is afflicted by barriers that we know too well: risk, uncertainty, imperfect markets, etc.

Thank You

A l e x D e P i n t o : a . d e p i n t o @ c g i a r . o r g SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOWENVIRONMENT AND PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY DIVISION

INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE, WASHINGTON, DC