Impact pathways from climate services to SDG2 (“zero hunger”): A synthesis of evidence

Hansen, James; List, Geneva; Downs, Shauna; Carr, Edward R.; Diro, Rahel; Baethgen, Walter E.; Kruczkiewicz, Andrew; Braun, Mélody; Furlow, John; Walsh, Kayla; Magima, Nitin

doi:10.1016/j.crm.2022.100399

Cited by 10 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 147 publications

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“…Moreover, a singular focus on yields (or nutrition alone) can result in unintended consequences including increased environmental and/or social impacts in these deeply integrated socio ecological systems (Zurek et al, 2016). These issues may be intensified because climate variability and change has the potential to transform and degrade agricultural systems if not incorporated and planned for through a wide range of policy, economic, and social system levers (Hansen et al, 2022). Musumba et al (2017), proposed five domains (productivity, economic, environment, human condition, and social) to provide indicators for assessing the relative sustainability of an agricultural innovation.…”

Section: Modeling Sustainable Intensificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These strategies are often based on tradition or experience which may, or may not, align with existing scientific knowledge on how to adapt to rapidly changing conditions. Unanticipated and unmitigated climate risk is a primary driver of both shortand long-term food insecurity, as it reduces uptake of new agricultural technologies and can lead to negative livelihood impacts well after a period of climatic stress (Hansen et al, 2022).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…There are many ways to develop specific policies that support the transformation of climate information into multilayered agricultural programs, including anticipatory action and index-based insurance which supports governments and individuals in adopting new agricultural practices (Hansen et al, 2022). For example, the World Food Program's R4 Rural Resilience Initiative provides access to subsidized drought and flood risk insurance products which are triggered with a precipitation index.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Integrated modeling framework for sustainable agricultural intensification

Brown

Carcedo

Eggen

et al. 2023

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

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Agricultural scientists are pursuing sustainable intensification strategies to increase global food availability, but integration from research to impact at the local-level requires knowledge of demographic and human-environment to enhance the adaptive capacity of farmers cultivating <10 ha. Enhancing close collaboration among transdisciplinary teams and these smallholders is critical to co-elaborate policy solutions to ongoing food security crises that are likely to be attuned with local conditions. Human and socio-cultural aspects need to be considered to facilitate both adoption and dissemination of adapted management practices. Despite this well-known need to co-produce knowledge in human systems, we demonstrate the inequality of current agricultural research in smallholder farming systems with heavy focus on a few domains of the sustainable intensification agricultural framework (SIAF), ultimately reducing the overall impact of interventions due to the lack compatibility with prevailing social contexts. Here we propose to integrate agriculture and agronomic models with social and demographic modeling approaches to increase agricultural productivity and food system resilience, while addressing persistent issues in food security. Researchers should consider the scale of interventions, ensure attention is paid to equality and political processes, explore local change interactions, and improve connection of agriculture with nutrition and health outcomes, via nutrition-sensitive agricultural investments.

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Section: Modeling Sustainable Intensificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Integrated modeling framework for sustainable agricultural intensification

Brown

Carcedo

Eggen

et al. 2023

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

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“…Climate-related risk is a major contributor to food insecurity and an impediment to efforts to improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) (Rosenzweig and Binswanger, 1993;Devereux, 2007;Belesova et al, 2019;Hansen et al, 2019aHansen et al, , 2022Ngcamu and Chari, 2020). Wellfunctioning climate services are increasingly recognized as a crucial part of efforts to develop more climate-resilient agricultural and food systems in SSA, helping decisionmakers understand, anticipate and manage climate-related risks.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Wellfunctioning climate services are increasingly recognized as a crucial part of efforts to develop more climate-resilient agricultural and food systems in SSA, helping decisionmakers understand, anticipate and manage climate-related risks. Effective climate services support farmers to improve their productivity and welfare through a range of climate-sensitive production and livelihood decisions (Tall et al, 2018;Vaughan et al, 2019;Born et al, 2021;Hansen et al, 2022). They can also inform investment decisions by a range of agricultural value chain actors (e.g., input distributors, commodity markets, rural financial services).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Country-specific challenges to improving effectiveness, scalability and sustainability of agricultural climate services in Africa

Hansen

Born

Dossou-Yovo³

et al. 2022

Front. Clim.

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Climate services are playing an increasing role in efforts to build the resilience of African agriculture to a variable and changing climate. Efforts to improve the contribution of climate services to agriculture must contend with substantial differences in national agricultural climate services landscapes. Context-specific factors influence the effectiveness, scalability and sustainability of agricultural climate service, but in ways that are challenging to anticipate. In the context of six countries (Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Senegal, Zambia), this paper addresses the need to consider differing national contexts when developing strategies to make agricultural climate services in sub-Saharan Africa more effective, scalable and sustainable. Based on authors' collective firsthand knowledge and a review of information from secondary sources, we identify key strengths and weaknesses of climate services relative to agriculture sector needs in the focus countries; and assess factors that have contributed to those differences. Focus countries differ substantially in areas such as the degree of public support, alignment of services with agricultural needs, service delivery channels, degree of decentralization, and public—private-sector balance. These differences have been driven largely by differing national policies, delivery capacity and external actors, but not by responsiveness to agricultural sector demands. Building on the analyses of country differences and their drivers, we then discuss four key opportunities to further strengthen the contribution of climate services to agriculture: (a) leveraging farmer demand to drive scaling and sustainability; (b) exploiting digital innovation within a diverse delivery strategy; (c) balancing public and private sector comparative advantage; and (d) embedding climate services in agricultural extension. For each of these opportunities, we consider how different country contexts can impact the potential effectiveness, scalability and sustainability of services; and how efforts to strengthen those services can account for context-specific drivers to manage the tradeoffs among effectiveness, scalability and sustainability.

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How to bridge the last mile in agro-climate service adoption? The importance of farmers’ needs, attitudes and interpersonal relations in understanding impact pathways

Luu,

Luedeling,

Biber-Freudenberger

et al. 2024

Environ Dev Sustain

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Climate services can support multiple Sustainable Development Goals. However, in agricultural contexts, the “last-mile” delivery of agro-climate services (ACS) struggles with numerous barriers that prevent smallholder farmers from receiving crucial information. We sought to assess the processes by which farmers adopt ACS in order to support the scaling of ACS. We developed a procedure to serve as a rapid test to provide an overview of impact pathway relations in ACS adoption. We generated ACS adoption pathways through focus group discussions, quantified the overall adoption rate and tested relationships between factors and their causal influence on adoption. To showcase our method, we used the case study of CARE in Vietnam (CVN), a non-governmental organization attempting to improve the provision of ACS to smallholder farmers since 2015. In CVN’s projects, ACS were co-generated and subsequently delivered to farmers through structured meetings or on an ad-hoc basis in village meetings. We found that farmers who participated in structured groups were very likely to demand, access, read, discuss, understand, positively perceive and adopt ACS and recommend them to peers. About half of the farmers in non-structured groups continued to have difficulties understanding ACS. Nevertheless, these farmers still had a positive attitude toward ACS. While different impact pathways were attributed to the two groups, they still shared similar adoption rates (98%). The results suggest that adoption of ACS at a critical mass might be sufficient to trigger systemic changes within social groups and interactions between its members. Employing a pathway approach can be beneficial for designing and evaluating development interventions.

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Impact pathways from climate services to SDG2 (“zero hunger”): A synthesis of evidence

Cited by 10 publications

References 147 publications

Integrated modeling framework for sustainable agricultural intensification

Integrated modeling framework for sustainable agricultural intensification

Country-specific challenges to improving effectiveness, scalability and sustainability of agricultural climate services in Africa

How to bridge the last mile in agro-climate service adoption? The importance of farmers’ needs, attitudes and interpersonal relations in understanding impact pathways

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