Africa’s population, growing at a rate of 2.7 %, reached 1.1 billion as of mid-2015 and is projected to be 1.7 billion in 2030, 2.5 billion in 2050 and 4.4 billion in 2100. This population depends on agricultural outputs from smallholder farmers who cultivate small parcels of, mostly degraded, land and have no access to reliable irrigation, affordable inputs, financial credit services, output markets and agricultural information. Thus, food security remains a great concern with ~220 million people (23.2 %) having been unable to consume enough food to lead active and healthy lives in 2014-2016. This is an increase of ~44 million people from 1990-1992. Ensuring food security without compromising sustainability of land resources under a rapidly growing population and changing climate is among the major challenges of this era. In this chapter, we present climate-smart agriculture (CSA) as an approach that can be adopted to increase agricultural productivity and incomes in environmentally and socially sustainable ways, enhance farmers’ resilience and mitigate climate change in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Specifically, we describe the array of proven practical techniques that underpin CSA, highlight soil as a limited resource and emphasise the importance of its sound management for present and future use. As none of the CSA technologies individually offers a magic bullet solution to the foregoing challenges and most of the promising technologies are founded on local knowledge, local and scientific knowledge must be integrated when choosing the most suitable climate-smart technologies and practices for any given agro-ecology. We thus recommend creating policies and multi-sectoral and multi-agency approaches which foster partnerships between governments, the private sector and non-governmental organisations to achieve CSA in SSA. © Springer International Publishing AG 2016.
Tag: climate-smart agriculture (csa)
Scaling up climate-smart agriculture: lessons learned from South Asia and pathways for success
The world is changing rapidly. A burgeoning global population, with direct impacts on foodinsecurity, poverty, climate change and environmental degradation, is constantly changingthe stakes. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) can help overcome hunger while supporting ruralpopulations adapt to climate change, managing natural resources sustainably and curbingrising temperatures. But as the challenges build and intensify, climate-smart solutions willneed to be implemented on a much greater scale.This paper aims to aid policy makers and rural development practitioners in strategicallyplanning scaling up of successful CSA practices. We provide the context for scaling up CSA,identify practical elements to guide thinking and planning around scaling up and mappathways for taking CSA to scale. Building on a series of workshops and eight case studiesfrom South Asia, we identify widely applicable ingredients for scaling up CSA and how theymust be connected to achieve impact.