The mitigation pillar of Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA): targets and options

The need to prioritise food security in the face of a changing climate raises the question of how much agriculture should contribute to global mitigation targets. A global target for reducing methane and nitrous oxide emissions from agriculture of ~1 gigatonne of carbon dioxide equivalent per year (GtCO2e/yr) by 2030 would limit warming in 2100 to 2°C above pre-industrial levels. Yet low emissions development (LED) in agriculture, based on available technologies and policies, will deliver only a portion of the needed mitigation. More transformative options will be needed, including carbon sequestration, reduced food loss and waste, and shifts in consumption

Next steps for climate change mitigation in agriculture

Agriculture can contribute significantly to climate change mitigation, but more action is needed to identify appropriate implementation mechanisms, technical guidelines, policies and sources of finance to improve readiness and capacity building

Collaborative management of forests

"Millions of the rural poor now participate in collaborative forest management schemes under a variety of tenurial and organizational arrangements.We examine those arrangements and ask whether local people have indeed gained more access to benefits from and control over forests. Our findings suggest that most co-management projects actually maintain and even extend central government control." from Text.Property rights ,Collective action ,

A rough estimate of the proportion of global emissions from agriculture due to smallholders

Smallholders in developing countries produce, on a very rough estimate, 5% of total global greenhouse gas emissions. This figure includes emissions due to both agriculture and land use change for agriculture. Mitigation actions in smallholder agriculture now could support farm livelihoods and more sustainable agriculture in the long run, but should only be introduced where they have the potential to advance rather than constrain rural development outcomes

German government invests EUR15 million in major new program to pay small-scale farmers to produce ecosystem services, including climate change adaptation and mitigation

The International Group of Seven (G7) Presidency (Germany) used an analysis of payments for ecosystem services and innovative finance to develop the CompensAction Initiative to incentivize small-scale farmers to produce ecosystem services. As a first action, in 2022 the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) invested EUR 15 million in three projects of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). BMZ will continue to invest at least $1-2 million/year in CompensAction projects

Investing in a just protein transition

"Investing in a just protein transition" presentation by Lini Wollenberg at the FAIRR and Clim-EAT Brainstorming session from May 17-18, 2022. Organized by the Farm Animal Investment Risk & Return (FAIRR) Initiative and Clim-Eat. The purpose of this session is to stimulate a just transition to sustainable meat production and democratize alternative meat production

A gender strategy for pro-poor climate change mitigation

The Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security Research Program (CCAFS) of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Resources (CGIAR) CCAFS “seeks to overcome the threats to agriculture and food security in a changing climate, exploring new ways of helping vulnerable rural communities adjust to global changes in climate.”1 The CCAFS Gender Strategy (Ashby, et al. 2012) makes the case for gender analysis as critical to increased production, improved outcomes for poverty alleviation and increased well-being, and a fairer distribution of burdens and benefits in agriculture among women and men. This report proposes a gender strategy for climate change mitigation and the promotion of low emissions agriculture—the focus of CCAFS Theme 3: Pro-Poor Climate Change Mitigation. Specifically, we provide a strategy for assuring that mitigation efforts meet the goals of poverty alleviation and food security, and do so in ways that benefit poor women materially, personally and socially. We focus on women because of their historical and contemporary disadvantages, and recognize that benefits for women are generally broader and more durable to the extent men embrace those benefits, whether out of their own material interests or from commitments to family and community well-being. Although CCAFS has separated mitigation, adaptation, and risk management into three distinct research themes, we suggest these must be addressed in an integrated way to meet farmers’ needs. Farmers are primarily concerned with their well-being and that of their families and neighbors, rather than larger global environmental issues. Many also hold a ‘landscape-view’ of their home places in which water and energy sources, forests and grasslands, farms and fallows are all considered in relation to one another in contributing to farmers’ livelihood strategies, even though strategies for adaptation may emphasize one part of the landscape and mitigation another (Shames and Scherr, 2011). Initiatives to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions should therefore ideally enhance and at least not harm adaptation and risk management. Similarly adaptation should aim to minimize GHG emissions where possible

Climate readiness indicators for agriculture

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