Economic aspects of genetic resources in addressing agricultural productivity in the context of climate change

The main objective of this paper is to discuss the economic aspects of genetic resources in addressing agricultural productivity in the context of climate change and variability in Africa. The paper synthesizes the published literature related to this topic, which has not been well integrated, especially with respect to economic improvements and the use of genetic resources in Africa. The focus is to understand the nexus between climate change, genetic resources, and agricultural productivity; the economic aspects involved in the conservation and improvement of genetic resources at farm-level use; and the adoption of these technologies to address agricultural productivity. The results show that climate change affects both genetic resources and agricultural productivity. The interaction of climate change and other stressors exacerbates the vulnerability of agricultural production systems and genetic resources. The conservation and improvement of genetic resources should address the urgent need to increase investments in conservation and the development of future adapted technologies. At the farm level, the focus should be on developing distribution and dissemination systems, including raising awareness and educating farmers on the role of genetic resource technologies in addressing agricultural productivity under climate change. Furthermore, it is critical to ensure that farmers have the means to purchase the improved genetic resource technologies to be able to use and adopt them. Efforts to conserve, improve, and promote the use of genetic resource technologies in addressing agricultural productivity should integrate the distribution, accessibility, and use of the improved technologies at the farm level and be integrated in broader adaptation and development efforts

Measuring baseline agriculture-related sustainable development goals index for southern Africa

Sustainable development has become the main focus of the global development agenda as presented in the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, for countries to assess progress, they need to have reliable baseline indicators. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to develop a composite baseline index of the agriculture-related SDGs in Southern Africa to guide progress reporting. The paper identified eight of the SDG indicators related to the agriculture sector. The paper relies on data for indicators from five SDGs (SDGs 1, 2, 6, 7 and 15). Applying the arithmetic mean method of aggregation, an agriculture-related SDG composite index for Southern Africa between zero (0 = poor performance) and 100 (best possible performance) was computed for thirteen countries that had data on all identified indicators. The results show that the best performing countries (Botswana, Angola, Namibia, Zambia and South Africa) in the assessment recorded high scores in SDGs 1, 2 and 7. The three countries (Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe and Madagascar) that performed poorly on both SDG 1 and 2 also had the least scores on the overall agriculture-related SDG composite index. The water stress indicator for SDG 6 recorded the worst performance among most countries in the region. Possible approaches to improve the contribution of agriculture to SDGs may include investing more resources in priority areas for each agriculture-related SDG depending on baseline country conditions. The implementation, monitoring and evaluation of regional and continental commitments in the agriculture sector and the SDGs are critical for achievement of the targets at the national and local levels. While the methods employed are well-grounded in literature, data unavailability for some of the SDGs in some countries presented a limitation to the study, and future efforts should focus on collecting data for the other SDGs in order to permit a wider application