Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

Several new initiatives of cash transfer programmes have recently emerged in sub-Saharan Africa, and most target poor rural households dependent on subsistence agriculture. This paper synthesizes the key findings of From Protection to Production Project (PtoP) of FAO and discusses the role of cash transfer programmes risk management tool to increase resilience in sub-Saharan Africa. Results show that such programmes have important implications for household resilience. Although the impacts on risk management are less uniform, the cash transfer programmes seem to strengthen community ties (via increased giving and receiving of transfers) and allow households to save and pay off debts, and decrease the need to rely on adverse risk coping mechanisms. One important finding related to climate change, as illustrated by the Zambia case, is that households receiving cash transfers suffered much less from weather shocks, with poorest households as the biggest gains, and food security increased, although differing across countries. The paper concludes that social protection programmes could be more effective as safety nets by explicitly accounting for climate risk in their design and implementation.

The achievement of Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) goals in Africa will require widespread farmer adoption of practices and technologies that promote resilience and system-wide collective action to promote climate risk management activities and coping strategies. Leveraging public sector resources is critical to achieve goals at scale. This study examines the scope for input subsidy programs (ISPs) to contribute to achieving CSA objectives in Africa. Available evidence to date suggests that in most cases ISPs have had either no effect on or have reduced SSA smallholders’ use of potentially CSA practices. However, recent innovations in ISPs may promote some climate smart objectives by contributing to system-level risk management. In particular, restricted voucher systems for improved seed types that utilize private sector distribution supply chains may prove capable of promoting CSA goals. Generally, moving from systems that prescribe a fixed input packet to a flexible system with a range of input choices holds promise, but fixed systems still hold some benefits. Conditional ISPs would require improved monitoring and compliance as well as defining practices with clearly measurable productivity benefits vis-à-vis CSA goals. The potential of ISPs to achieve widespread CSA benefits must address these challenges and be evaluated against benefits of investments in irrigation, physical infrastructure, and public agricultural research and extension, which may generate higher comprehensive social benefits.

Adaptation options that work reasonably well across an entire range of potential outcomes are shown to be preferable in a context of deep uncertainty. This is because robust practices that are expected to perform satisfactorily across the full range of possible future conditions, are preferable to those that are the best ones, but just in one specific scenario. Thus, using a Robust Decision Making Approach in Nigerian agriculture may increase resilience to climate change. To illustrate, the expansion of irrigation might be considered as a complementary strategy to conservation techniques and a shift in sowing/planting dates to enhance resilience of agriculture. However, given large capital expenditures, irrigation must consider climate trends and variability. Using historical climate records is insufficient to size capacity and can result in “regrets” when the investment is undersized/oversized, if the climate turns out to be drier/wetter than expected. Rather utilizing multiple climate outcomes to make decisions will decrease “regrets.” This chapter summarizes the main results from a study titled “Toward climate-resilient development in Nigeria” funded by the Word Bank (See Cervigni et al. ).

The predicted effects of climate change call for a multi-dimensional method to assess the performance of various agricultural systems across economic, environmental and social dimensions. Climate smart agriculture (CSA) recognizes that the three goals of climate adaptation, mitigation and resilience must be integrated into the framework of a sustainable agricultural system. However, current methods to determine a systems’ ability to achieve CSA goals are lacking. This paper presents a new simulation-based method based on the Regional Integrated Assessment (RIA) methods developed by the Agricultural Model Inter-comparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) for climate impact assessment. This method combines available data, field- and stakeholder-based surveys, biophysical and economic models, and future climate and socio-economic scenarios. It features an integrated farm and household approach and accounts for heterogeneity across biophysical and socioeconomic variables as well as temporal variability of climate indicators. This method allows for assessment of the technologies and practices of an agricultural system to achieve the three goals of CSA. The case study of a mixed crop livestock system in western Zimbabwe is highlighted as a typical smallholder agricultural systems in Africa.

Food supply chains are essential to food security in developing regions where today the great majority of food consumed is purchased from rural-urban, rural-rural, and urban-rural supply chains. Disrupting those supply chains means disrupting food security. Yet short-term climate shocks and long-term climate change threaten to cause that disruption. This chapter does four things: (1) analyzes the types and determinants of vulnerabilities of food supply chains to climate shocks and change; (2) considers how those vulnerabilities are conditioned by urbanization, diet change, and rapid transformation of food systems; (3) discusses how supply chain actors, from farmers to processors and distributors and input suppliers, invest in mitigation of the risks of these shocks and reduction of their vulnerabilities; (4) discusses policy implications and lays out an agenda for research for climate smart food supply chains in developing regions.

Climate change adds to the existing challenges in improving crop productivity and welfare for smallholder agricultural households by affecting the mean and variability of weather conditions and the frequency of extreme weather events. In the face of such growing uncertainty, agricultural practices of small landholders need to be adapted to better manage the changing risk structures. Since government risk management programs may complement or substitute for farmer adaptation, this chapter examines how a range of institutional interventions might assist, obstruct, channel, or change smallholder agricultural adaptation to climate change. Taken together, our results underscore the importance of the informational role of the agriculture extension, suggest that insurance can lead to significant changes in farmer planting and land management decisions, and show how information about changing conditions and insurance can be complimentary in driving changes in farmer behavior.

The mixed crop-livestock systems of the developing world will become increasingly important for meeting the food security challenges of the coming decades. The synergies and trade-offs between food security, adaptation, and mitigation objectives are not well studied, however. Comprehensive evaluations of the costs and benefits, and the synergies and trade-offs, of different options in developing-country mixed systems do not exist as yet. Here we summarise what we know about the climate smartness of different alternatives in the mixed crop-livestock systems in developing countries, based on published literature supplemented by a survey of experts. We discuss constraints to the uptake of different interventions and the potential for their adoption, and highlight some of the technical and policy implications of current knowledge and knowledge gaps.

To support countries implementing CSA solutions, the Economics and Policy Innovations for Climate Smart Agriculture (EPIC) group at FAO uses a methodology based on building a solid evidence base. The knowledge gained from datasets that combine household, geographical and climate data helps design policies that enhance food security and climate resilience while also taking advantage of mitigation opportunities to obtain financing. Appropriate application of CSA principles depends on specific conditions that vary between and within countries. Demographic, environmental, economic and institutional factors are all important determinants of the effectiveness of any particular policy. This chapter builds upon econometric results obtained from previous analyses by developing a conceptual model that introduces the temporal aspects of household vulnerability. The method is based on a factorial design with two vulnerability levels (high and low) and two production methods (conventional or business as usual, and improved agricultural management with high CSA potential). Farms are classified into groups based on cluster analysis of survey data from Zambia. Results provide a baseline consisting of probability distributions of yields, labor use, cash inputs and profit for each of the four combinations of vulnerability level and production system. This is useful for stochastic dominance analysis, but additional work is required to incorporate the temporal aspect of the problem. The chapter identifies data gaps and additional analyses required to capture the spatio-temporal aspects of household vulnerability and adaptive capacity.

Weather volatility is increasing, hence the need to build resilience for farmers and the poor, who are affected the most. Using Mali and Nigeria as case study countries, this study shows that climate change may reduce the yield of staple food crops – namely maize, rice, and millet – by 20% in 2050 compared to their levels in 2000. Sustainable land and water management (SLWM) – which includes a combination of organic soil fertility, inorganic fertilizer, and water managements – will more than offset the effect of climate change on yield under the current management practices. Additionally, SLWM is more profitable and could therefore increase household income and address poverty.

Unfortunately, adoption rates of SLWM remain low. Policies and strategies for increasing their adoption includes improvement of market access, enhancing the capacity of agricultural extension service providers to provide advisory services on SLWM, and building an effective carbon market that involves both domestic and international buyers. The recent United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) provides one of the opportunities for reducing climate risks and achieving sustainable agricultural production under climate change.

Central Asia is projected to experience significant climate change, combined with increased weather volatility. Agriculture is a key economic sector and a major source of livelihoods for Central Asia’s predominantly rural population, especially for the poor. Agricultural production, being sensitive to weather shocks and climate volatility, may be negatively affected by climate change if no adaptive actions are taken. Climate smart technologies could help in strengthening the resilience of agricultural producers in the region to increased weather variability due to climate change. This study identifies the key barriers and opportunities for a wider adoption of climate smart technologies and also evaluates their potential impacts on agricultural revenues of differentiated groups of agricultural producers, with a focus on the poor. Adoption of climate smart agricultural technologies was found to raise farming profits of both poorer and richer households, although these positive impacts may likely to be higher for richer households. The study also shows that policies facilitating improved access to markets and agricultural extension services, as well as higher commercialization of household agricultural output may increase the adoption of climate smart agricultural technologies in the region.