Nurturing a gender-responsive approach to climate-smart agriculture in Guinayangan, Quezon

Coconut-based farming systems in Guinayangan, Quezon offer special opportunities for achieving multiple objectives, including carbon sequestration, economic empowerment of women and reduction of risks from variable and extreme weather. This info note discusses the gender-based role inequalities within coconut-based farming systems that can be addressed through agroforestry-based, climate-smart agriculture that features small livestock, fruit trees and root and tuber crops as understory crops. Numerous Climate-Smart Villages, spread across the municipality of Guinayangan, now serve as proof of concept, providing evidence that climate-smart agriculture based on agroforestry interventions are gender sensitive

Fostering local adaptation platforms for agriculture: How context specific climate-smart villages (CSVs) can relate to local adaptation efforts.

Local adaptation platforms help empower sub-national and local government players, civil society organizations, and public-private partnerships in demonstrating the validity of agro-ecology-specific solutions to current and future climate change impacts. This brief discusses how Climate-Smart Villages, good examples of local adaptation platform, have served as centers for discovery, adaptation, learning, and sharing of climate-smart agriculture in local communities

The AMIA Experience: Supporting local actions for Climate Resilient Agriculture

The brief tackles how the Adaptation and Mitigation Initiative in Agriculture (AMIA) Program of the Philippines’ Department of Agriculture (DA) served as a platform for supporting local actions for climate resilient agriculture. The document discusses a number of key lessons emerging from the AMIA Village experience on the importance of local platforms for adaptation in the form of Climate-Smart Villages towards overall resilience building of the sector

Pathways to Attaining a Food Secure Philippines through a Competitive and Climate-Resilient Agri-Fisheries Sector

This document highlights the key messages drawn from climate adaptation efforts and events done with Philippines’ Department of Agriculture-Regional Field Offices (DA-RFOs) across the country. This brief, developed for the Climate Change Consciousness Week, offers DA a synthesis of lessons from the Adaptation and Mitigation Initiative in Agriculture (AMIA) village experience as a bankable model for establishing context specific, local adaptation platforms for developing and disseminating CRA technologies and processes. This brief also offers valuable policy insights for the Philippines’ National Adaptation Plan

Addressing gender-based impacts of climate change: A case study of Guinayangan, Philippines

This brief summarizes the findings of a case study of a diversification effort undertaken in Guinayangan Climate-Smart Village. Small livestock systems, a climate-smart agriculture practice, present a less risk-prone livelihood venture. It can feature as a diversification agenda, reducing the risks from crop failure and are relevant to all ecosystems. Small livestock initiatives can benefit women as it provides them with a low-labor and manageable economic option, which requires a small startup investment

Equity, empowerment and gender relations: A literature review of special relevance for climate-smart agriculture programming

The brief summarizes the results of a literature review on equity, empowerment and gender relations for climate-smart agriculture programming. The review found out that a wider and more equitable gender sensitivity is now seen amongst policy makers and local government, with a corresponding enhanced and out-scaled uptake on CSA. Improved access to resources, information, markets and decision-making opportunities of women will bring them on par with men as equal partners in climate change and disaster risk reduction efforts. Applying social learning improved the adaptive capacities of women

Coconut-based Systems in the Philippines: Intensification and Diversification with Climate-Smart Agriculture

To generate evidence on increasing household resilience to climate change through increased farm income while also generating social benefits, a Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) study was undertaken in 2021 by the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR) with support from the International Research and Development Center (IDRC). For the Philippine component of the study, the study determined the financial and social benefits of raising native pigs and planting fruit trees and black pepper gained by the households from Guinayangan, Quezon and Ivisan, Capiz. The combination of planting fruit trees and black pepper as well as native pig production are viable when they are integrated with the main sources of livelihood of the villages of Himbubulo Weste and Magsaysay (Guinayangan). The study showed that the said villages will continue to financially benefit from the CSA interventions despite facing possible threats in the market. The funds invested by the community members in implementing the CSA interventions are expected to be recovered within three years after 2020. Diversifying farm production should be encouraged and practiced by more households as it serves as a cushion to minimize loss of livelihood for the family, and could help households maintain a steady and reliable income even if one of the crops failed or incurred losses

Cost-Benefit Analysis of Native Pigs as a Climate-Smart Agriculture Option in the Philippines

The Climate-Smart Village (CSV) approach is one of the initiatives that was developed to address the impact of climate change on marginalized rural households, and one of the climate-smart agriculture (CSA) options implemented in the Philippines was raising native pigs. A cost-benefit analysis (CBA) was conducted to assess the financial benefits of raising native pigs by determining the net income generated by the village households. A total of 52 households from Guinyangan, Quezon and Ivisan, Capiz were interviewed as survey participants while, village and municipal officials acted as key informants. Our findings showed that majority of the households surveyed generated positive net income in raising native pigs. However, 2020 profits decreased possibly due to the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study also revealed the reliance of producers in commercial feeds instead of maximizing the available forage; keeping of livestock as inventories resulting to additional costs; and the lack of record keeping practices and absence of a price monitoring system causing the producers to be dependent on the prices offered by the buyers. Thus, providing education and training support on monitoring and assessing costs of raising pigs, and marketing assistance would be valuable to the households

Farmer Learning Groups

The poster presents how organizing and facilitating farmer learning groups would encourage sharing of knowledge and learnings from implementation of action research

Releasing potentials ... toward sustainable community forestry

Co-published with the International Development Research Centre (IDRC