Module 12: Local institutions

Improving smallholder agricultural systems is central to achieving climate-smart agriculture (CSA). This module focuses on local-level institutions and their role in facilitating the adoption of climate-smart agricultural strategies. The module demonstrates the importance of local institutions for CSA projects (Section 12.1); outlines priorities, needs, similarities and differences between key institutions (Section 12.2); and discusses considerations to bear in mind when building inter-institutional synergies for CSA initiatives (Section 12.3). Finally, it offers basic, practical guidelines to help practitioners and policy-makers build institutional support for CSA (Section 12.4)

Complex land systems: the need for long time perspectives to assess their future.

The growing awareness about the need to anticipate the future of land systems focuses on how well we understand the interactions between society and environmental processes within a complexity framework. A major barrier to understanding is insufficient attention given to long (multidecadal) temporal perspectives on complex system behavior that can provide insights through both analog and evolutionary approaches. Analogs are useful in generating typologies of generic system behavior, whereas evolutionary assessments provide insight into site-specific system properties. Four dimensions of these properties: (1) trends and trajectories, (2) frequencies, thresholds and alternate steady states, (3) slow and fast processes, and (4) legacies and contingencies, are discussed. Compilations and analyses of past information and data from instruments and observations, palaeoenvironmental archives, and human and environmental history are now the subject of major international effort. The embedding of empirical information over multidecadal timescales in attempts to define and model sustainable and adaptive management of land systems is now not only possible, but also necessary

The trade-offs in multi-purpose land use. Land degradation and the Sustainable Development Goals

Sorghum is cultivated on Vertisols in the Ethiopian Highlands. An experiment was conducted in the Gumara-Maksegnit watershed in 2013 and 2014 to assess the effect of rate and timing of nitrogen fertilizer application on the possibility to shorten the maturity period and to improve the productivity of sorghum. The experiment was laid out as Randomized Complete Block Design with three replications. Treatments were nitrogen doses between 0 and 87 kg N ha-1 as urea applied at planting, at knee-height stage or in split doses at both stages. Results showed that application of 23, 41, 64 and 87 kg ha-1 N gave a yield increase of 40, 53, 62 and 69% over the control (0 kg N ha-1), respectively. In addition, split application of 41 kg ha-1, 64 kg ha-1 and 87 kg ha-1 of nitrogen fertilizer, half at planting and half at knee height stage, gave 19%, 15% and 18% increase in sorghum grain yield over a single dose application, respectively. Applying 87 kg ha-1 nitrogen fertilizer with split application half at planting and half at knee height stage, along with 46 kg ha-1 of P2O5, gave the highest grain yield and income

Module 18: Assessment, monitoring and evaluation

This module looks at assessment, monitoring and evaluation frameworks that are necessary for the successful adoption of climate-smart agriculture (CSA). Focus is placed mainly at the subnational and national levels. However, some case studies address activities at the farm or project level. The module presents an overview of important climate change-related assessment, monitoring and evaluation activities in policy and programme processes and project cycles. The purposes of these activities, baselines, and associated concepts are also described. Details are provided about how to conduct assessments relating to policies and project justification and design, as well as monitoring and evaluation. In the last section, the specific challenges to assessment, monitoring and evaluation in the context of CSA are reviewed and some guiding principles for addressing them are offered

Climate-smart agriculture for food security

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an approach for transforming and reorienting agricultural systems to support food security under the new realities of climate change. Widespread changes in rainfall and temperature patterns threaten agricultural production and increase the vulnerability of people dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods, which includes most of the world's poor. Climate change disrupts food markets, posing population-wide risks to food supply. Threats can be reduced by increasing the adaptive capacity of farmers as well as increasing resilience and resource use efficiency in agricultural production systems. CSA promotes coordinated actions by farmers, researchers, private sector, civil society and policymakers towards climate-resilient pathways through four main action areas: (1) building evidence; (2) increasing local institutional effectiveness; (3) fostering coherence between climate and agricultural policies; and (4) linking climate and agricultural financing. CSA differs from 'business-as-usual' approaches by emphasizing the capacity to implement flexible, context-specific solutions, supported by innovative policy and financing actions