Indigenous knowledge systems and climate change management in Africa

Climate change presents a profound challenge to food security and sustainable development in Africa. Its negative impacts are likely to be greatest in the African region, which is already food insecure. In the face of global climate change and its emerging challenges and unknowns, it is essential that decision makers base policies on the best available knowledge. In recent years, the knowledge of local and indigenous people, often referred to as indigenous knowledge (IK) has been increasingly recognised as an important source of climate knowledge and adaptation strategies

A business case for engaging the private sector in climate-smart solutions for smallholder farmers

Large and growing numbers of poor rural households depend on climate-sensitive agriculture and operate on the margins of the mainstream economy. This combined with a broken public extension service and faltering international development efforts places millions of smallholder farmers at disproportionately high risk from a changing climate. Acknowledging the magnitude of the challenge and the required pace and scale of response, coupled with honest introspection on past performance, has prompted the need to look beyond the public sector for delivering climate-smart solutions. Harnessing the financial, technological and intellectual capital in the private sector to complement public sector-driven climate responses is a new dimension in delivery of sustainable climate-smart solutions at scale

L'assurance basée sur un indice climatique : une solution pour les petits exploitants face aux enjeux climatiques

Le changement climatique représente l'un des grands enjeux de notre siècle. Le défi est immense mais des solutions existent. Dans cet article, Oluyede Ajayi et Mariam Kadzamira détaillent comment le CTA a couplé l'assurance basée sur un indice climatique à d'autres services afin de renforcer la résilience de 140 000 familles de petits exploitants en Afrique australe

Weather-based index insurance: a climate-smart agricultural solution for smallholder farmers

The athors explain how CTA has been bundling weather-based index insurance with other services to increase the resilience of 140,000 smallholder households in Southern Africa to climatic changes

Putting the private sector at the centre of climate-smart agriculture

This brief draws on three cases to show how the private sector contributes to the conceptualisation, design, delivery and evaluation of climate-smart agricultural interventions and can help bring them to scale. Engaging the private sector in CSA interventions enhances the applicability – and thus the sustainability of interventions, increases uptake and delivers a triple win for donors, beneficiaries and the private sector. They emphasise that private-sector players will be more likely to engage in scaling-up of CSA when they can see a compelling business case to justify their investments

Mettre le secteur privé au coeur de l'agriculture intelligente face au climat

Le récent atelier du CTA sur « la mise en oeuvre de solutions intelligentes face au climat pour l’agriculture de nouvelle génération dans les pays ACP » a identifié quatre défis fondamentaux à relever : renforcer l’adoption d’interventions et de solutions, démontrer de manière plus convaincante aux agriculteurs les avantages des interventions climato-intelligentes, promouvoir des cadres et processus politiques appropriés, améliorer l’information, la communication et le feedback pour encourager la sensibilisation des acteurs et leur implication dans les interventions. Les interventions efficaces étaient axées sur cinq priorités : étoffer les données probantes, développer des cadres politiques favorables, renforcer les institutions, mettre au point des options de financement alternatives et donner la priorité aux interventions centrées sur l’exploitation agricole

Economic framework for integrating environmental stewardship into food security strategies in low-income countries: case of agroforestry in southern African region

One of the greatest challenges in many Sub-Saharan Africa countries especially where seasonal food deficits occur frequently, is how best to achieve a balance between the goals of food security and agricultural production on the one hand, and the concerns for the conservation of environmental quality and natural resources capital on the other. A number of agricultural production technologies (based on natural resource management principles) exist that offer opportunities for achieving the two seemingly divergent goals because they have the characteristics to produce joint multiple outputs, i.e, they produce food and provide environmental services. However, farmer adoption of these technologies has generally been limited. Drawing from natural resource economics, this study presents a conceptual framework that provide environmental-economic logic for establishing incentives that internalize the environmental services produced by multiple-outputs land use technologies. Using a land use practice based on agroforestry principles (that is, “improved tree fallows”) as a case study, this paper synthesizes studies carried out in southern Africa region for over a decade. It then discusses how the potential impacts of the technological advances made in research and development are affected by policy and institutional constraints, among other challenges. With particular emphasis on the socio-economic context in southern Africa, the paper identifies options for addressing these institutional and policy constraints in order to facilitate adoption of multi-output land use practices by farmers and unlock their potential to meet food production goals for individual households and environmental services for the wider society.Keywords: Adoption, Agri-Environmental quality, Environmental services, Natural resource economics, Payment for environmental services, Science-policy linkage