Adaptation of Agriculture to Climate Change

Project description

These direct impacts translate to other impacts like decreased food and livelihood security and projections of future climate change indicate an intensification of these changes.
These impacts will also interact with multiple exposures to other livelihood risks like market failures and weak institutional frameworks. Considering that many of those practicing agriculture are poor and lack the necessary assets to effectively protect their livelihoods and adapt to climate change, appropriate instruments and frameworks are sought to reduce the impacts of climate change on agriculture.
The fact that those who practice agriculture are at the same time the custodians of the natural landscape, which will also be affected by climate change, in addition to other non-climate stressors, means that ways need to be sought to incentivise adaptation actions by the poor.
Thus our work explores how various agricultural systems (integrated farming systems, conventional agriculture, organic agriculture, conservation agriculture and their different shades) and livelihoods adapt to climate change. The potentials for enhancing adaptive capacities of agriculturally-based livelihoods are also examined. In doing so, synergies between climate change mitigation and adaptation that emerge are further explored.
Sustainable land management is thus crucial for climate change adaptation in agriculture, climate- and environmental protection and this depends on the actions of smallholders, the majority of those practicing agriculture. Thus a further question is how agriculturally based livelihoods can derive benefits from the environmental services they offer to the public. Considering that a majority of the actors are poor, they lack the resources and will (e.g. opportunity costs of labour), to invest in land management, due also to concurrent pressing needs to achieve food security and inexistent incentives. The question then is how to feed insights from agriculture and sustainable land management into international discourses and frameworks.
Work components carried out under this theme are:

1. Resilient Adaptation to Climate Change in African Agriculture
Climate change is a reality that is already increasing rainfall variability, the frequency and intensities of extreme events like droughts and storms, with direct adverse impacts on agriculture. However, considering that uncertainties still abound as to the exact nature of climate change – how it will manifest in various local and regional places at different times, - approaches are sought that account for these uncertainties in the adaptation actions to be adopted. The concept of resilience in ecological, social and economic dimensions seems to offer such an approach that not only accounts for uncertainty and change and but also focuses on increasing the livelihood options available to the mostly poor smallholders. Work in this area thus explores what a resilient adaptation to climate change in the field of agriculture means for development policy and practice, and how such a concept can be made operational in order to contribute to adaptation planning and monitoring progress on adaptation.
Contact: Chinwe Ifejika Speranza

2. Organic Agriculture as a Climate Change Adaptation Strategy in Africa
This component analyses the roles of organic agriculture and its potential in adaptation to climate change, as well as, in climate change mitigation. The research links to component 1 and departs from the assumptions that in the context of high production costs for conventional agriculture (due to rise in input prices) and the increased risks of crop failures due to climate change, that a system shift to organic agriculture will be beneficial for smallholders. The project also addresses likely trade-offs for adaptation and food production, like in the current increasing demand for adoption of irrigation in Africa. A major research question is whether an intensive agricultural enterprise like organic farming in the context of other farming systems is profitable and how it can be implemented. In addressing this research question, related issues on how to improve the marketing of agricultural products for both conventional and organic production are also incorporated.
Contact: Susanne Neubert and Chinwe Ifejika Speranza

3. Adaptation to Climate Change in the Agricultural Extension Sector in Kenya
In Africa, Agricultural Extension Services (AES) have and continue to play a key role in agricultural development, in the diffusion of innovations, as medium for exchange of experiences with farmers and as a direct link between farmers and the government. Therefore, extension services are also expected to play a key role in adaptation to climate change in the field of agriculture.
DIE has contracted out an empirical study in this field:
The empirical study examines how the extension services can promote adaptation strategies and what structural or institutional reforms are necessary to enable extension services to effectively promote farmer adaptation practices. The study covers the smallholder farmers engaged in subsistence and commercial crops and livestock production in high and low potential areas, and fishing in Lake Victoria region. Empirical studies have been carried out in three districts, Embu (high potential area in the central highlands), Makueni (low potential area in eastern semi arid areas), and Bondo (low potential Lake Victoria region with fishing as the main source of livelihood). The consultant is Dr. Boniface Kiteme of the Centre for Training and Integrated Research for Arid and Semi-Arid Lands Development (CETRAD).
Contact: Chinwe Ifejika Speranza