Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) seeks to improve productivity for the achievement of food
security (pillar 1: Productivity), to develop a better ability to adapt (pillar 2: Adaptation), and
to limit greenhouse gas emissions (pillar 3: Mitigation). Technical and organizational
innovations are needed to find synergies among those three pillars.
Innovation (its creation and its operation) is a social phenomenon. Many studies worldwide
have shown that promoting a sustainable change and innovation within organizations has to
be analyzed and implemented with stakeholders. Thus, the ability of local actors to tackle
climate change and mitigate its effects will depend on their ability to innovate and mobilize
material and non-material resources, to articulate links among national policies, not only
between themselves, but also undertaking actions at the local level. To support stakeholders
in the development of responses to this challenge, we propose the development of open
innovation platforms, in which all local actors may participate. These platforms are virtual,
physical, or physico-virtual spaces to learn, jointly conceive, and transform different
situations; they are generated by individuals with different origins, different backgrounds and
interests (Pali and Swaans, 2013).The purpose of this manual is to provide a seven-step methodology to allow family farmers to co-build and adopt CSA options to tackle climate change in an open innovation platfor
