Tag: Adaptation

Using Forests to Enhance Resilience to Climate Change: The Case of smallholder agriculture in Savannakhet Province in Lao PDR

The 2014 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report observes that the mean annual temperature increased over the past century in Southeast Asia. The projections are that average changes in mean annual temperature will exceed 3oC in Southeast Asia. The increased occurrence of floods, droughts, and changes in the seasonal rainfall pattern are expected to have negative impacts on crop yields, food security, and livelihoods in vulnerable areas. In parts of Southeast Asia, climate change could exacerbate existing levels of poverty because of the changes in rice crop production and increases in food prices and the cost of living. The consequence of climate change, however, will vary across countries in the region.

In the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR), climate change is expected to modify the frequency, intensity, and location of existing climate hazards, straining existing common coping mechanisms-especially for people living in rural and remote places. With regards to chronic changes, efforts to enhance resilience could result in rewards. Ecosystem-based adaptation (EBA) measures can be suitable for enhancing resilience to climate change, especially for sectors that rely on natural systems. EBA uses biodiversity and ecosystem services as part of a general adaptation strategy to help people adapt to the adverse effects of climate change. This concept is based on the idea that ecosystem services reduce the vulnerability of society to climate change across sectors and subsectors. These measures can complement other adaptation measures and often generate co-benefits for the implementing households.

Poor farmers are the most vulnerable group in Lao society. This report, one in a series of studies, explores how forests can reduce the vulnerability of this segment of the Lao PDR population.6 It looks at how forests, through the provision of ecosystem services, contribute to adaptation of other sectors to climate change and aid the adaptation of poor smallholder agriculture households in the southern part of Lao PDR. The objective is to bring evidence to discussions among decision makers in government and development partner organizations about the linkages between agriculture and forests in the context of climate change (that is, about the role of forests in enhancing the resilience of an agricultural subsector) and to examine the implications for development and enhancing resilience to climate change in Lao PDR.

Integrating adaptation and mitigation in climate change and land-use policies in Peru

The interactions between climate change adaptation and mitigation are particularly evident in agriculture, forestry and other land-use-based activities. Adaptation projects can affect ecosystems and their ability to sequester and store carbon, while mitigation projects can enhance adaptive capacity or increase the vulnerability of people. These interactions must be considered when designing policies and strategies.

The discussion on policy integration of climate change adaptation and mitigation should focus on two issues: (1) integrating adaptation and mitigation in climate change policies to consider multiple goals, assess trade-offs and seek mutually supportive outcomes; and (2) integrating adaptation and mitigation jointly into sectoral policies, such as agriculture or forestry, in order to balance trade-offs and maximize co-benefits between climate change and other objectives.

National strategies and plans related to climate change in Peru as well as key land-use policies encompass both adaptation and mitigation objectives. Frameworks have been developed for the integrated implementation of adaptation and mitigation in the new National Climate Change Strategy and draft National Forests and Climate Change Strategy. Although most of the other strategies and action plans do not mention the joint implementation of adaptation and mitigation, they do emphasis delivery of ecosystem services. And enhancing ecosystem services can ultimately benefit both adaptation and mitigation and other national priorities.

What is needed is a strong focus on information and knowledge generation and management and an assessment of the current and potential impacts of national and subnational policies on ecosystem services at different scales. Establishing mechanisms for monitoring and evaluating policy implementation, stakeholder engagement and adaptive management are also crucial.

Integrating mitigation and adaptation in climate and land use policies in Indonesia: a policy document analysis

Most of the climate policy integration literature focuses on mainstreaming mitigation OR adaptation into sectoral policies. Such approaches, however, tend to ignore possible interactions between climate change adaptation and mitigation, which are particularly important in the land use sector. This paper investigates climate policy integration and coherence in the forest and agricultural sectors in Indonesia. It assesses the extent to which climate change policies display internal ‘climate change policy coherence’ between climate change mitigation and adaptation objectives, and ‘external policy coherence’ between climate change and non-climate change objectives of land use policies.

Integrating mitigation and adaptation in climate and land use policies in Brazil: a policy document analysis

This paper investigates climate policy integration and coherence in land use policies in Brazil. Unlike other policy analyses a key aim is to assess ‘internal policy coherence’ in the climate change domain, or the extent to which positive and negative interactions between mitigation and adaptation are taken into account in policy formulation. The paper is based on a systematic content analysis of major federal level climate change and land use policies. The results indicate a stronger focus on climate change mitigation compared to adaptation in all land uses. Integrated approaches that consider mutually supportive mitigation and adaptation actions are called for in key climate change policies, but so far such linkages remain largely unexplored in sectoral policies. While some progress in this regard occurred in the agricultural sector, this has not translated into actual policy actions that are of use to small-scale producers. In the forest domain the focus remains almost exclusively on climate change mitigation. Three main recommendations are drawn. First, more knowledge about locally specific climate change impacts, resilience, capacity and measures for climate change adaptation is needed in order to increase the opportunities to pursue mutually beneficial approaches to climate change mitigation, adaptation and development, in particular in the forestry sector. Second, policy makers need to address more explicitly potential trade-offs between mitigation and adaptation in both policy formulation and implementation. Third, policy action on how to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes and avoid trade-offs between mitigation and adaptation needs to be operationalised into concrete policy objectives within sectoral policies and into practices that apply not just to agriculture and livestock systems, but to forested landscapes as well.

Economic framework for integrating environmental stewardship into food security strategies in low-income countrie: case of agroforestry in southern Africa region

One of the greatest challenges in many Sub-Saharan Africa countries especially where seasonal food deficits occur frequently, is how best to achieve a balance between the goals of food security and agricultural production on the one hand, and the concerns for the conservation of environmental quality and natural resources capital on the other. A number of agricultural production technologies (based on natural resource management principles) exist that offer opportunities for achieving the two seemingly divergent goals because they have the characteristics to produce joint multiple outputs, i.e, they produce food and provide environmental services. However, farmer adoption of these technologies has generally been limited. Drawing from natural resource economics, this study presents a conceptual framework that provide environmental-economic logic for establishing incentives that internalize the environmental services produced by multiple-outputs land use technologies. Using a land use practice based on agroforestry principles (that is, “improved tree fallows”) as a case study, this paper synthesizes studies carried out in southern Africa region for over a decade. It then discusses how the potential impacts of the technological advances made in research and development are affected by policy and institutional constraints, among other challenges. With particular emphasis on the socio-economic context in southern Africa, the paper identifies options for addressing these institutional and policy constraints in order to facilitate adoption of multi-output land use practices by farmers and unlock their potential to meet food production goals for individual households and environmental services for the wider society.

Comparative assessment of maize, finger millet and sorghum for household food security in the face of increasing climatic risk

Questions as to which crop to grow, where, when and with what management, will be increasingly challenging for farmers in the face of a changing climate. The objective of this study was to evaluate emergence, yield and financial benefits of maize, finger millet and sorghum, planted at different dates and managed with variable soil nutrient inputs in order to develop adaptation options for stabilizing food production and income for smallholder households in the face of climate change and variability. Field experiments with maize, finger millet and sorghum were conducted in farmers’ fields in Makoni and Hwedza districts in eastern Zimbabwe for three seasons: 2009/10, 2010/11 and 2011/12. Three fertilization rates: high (90kgNha-1, 26kgPha-1, 7tha-1 manure), low (35kgNha-1, 14kgPha-1, 3tha-1 manure) and a control (zero fertilization); and three planting dates: early, normal and late, were compared. Crop emergence for the unfertilized finger millet and sorghum was 70% for the fertilized treatments. In contrast, the emergence for maize (a medium-maturity hybrid cultivar, SC635), was >80% regardless of the amount of fertilizer applied. Maize yield was greater than that of finger millet and sorghum, also in the season (2010/11) which had poor rainfall distribution. Maize yielded 5.4tha-1 compared with 3.1tha-1 for finger millet and 3.3tha-1 for sorghum for the early plantings in the 2009/10 rainfall season in Makoni, a site with relatively fertile soils. In the poorer 2010/11 season, early planted maize yielded 2.4tha-1, against 1.6tha-1 for finger millet and 0.4tha-1 for sorghum in Makoni. Similar yield trends were observed on the nutrient-depleted soils in Hwedza, although yields were less than those observed in Makoni. All crops yielded significantly more with increasing rates of fertilization when planting was done early or in what farmers considered the ‘normal window’. Crops planted early or during the normal planting window gave comparable yields that were greater than yields of late-planted crops. Water productivity for each crop planted early or during the normal window increased with increase in the amount of fertilizer applied, but differed between crop type. Maize had the highest water productivity (8.0kgdrymattermm-1ha-1) followed by sorghum (4.9kgmm-1ha-1) and then finger millet (4.6kgmm-1ha-1) when a high fertilizer rate was applied to the early-planted crop. Marginal rates of return for maize production were greater for the high fertilization rate (>50%) than for the low rate (100%) than for the high rate (<100%). Although maize yield was greater compared with finger millet, the latter had a higher content of calcium and can be stored for up to five years. The superiority of maize, in terms of yields, over finger millet and sorghum, suggests that the recommendation to substitute maize with small grains may not be a robust option for adaptation to increased temperatures and more frequent droughts likely to be experienced in Zimbabwe and other parts of southern Africa.

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