Improving Assessments of the Three Pillars of Climate Smart Agriculture: Current Achievements and Ideas for the Future

Abstract

In this study we evaluate Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) assessment tools with regard to their suitability for covering not only biophysical but also socioeconomic aspects of CSA, focusing on smallholder household level in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMIC). In this opinion piece we give a concise overview of the most recent developments in measuring key indicators and metrics for the three pillars of CSA (food security, adaptation, and mitigation) and give our opinion on how we think this would allow for improvements in the current state of assessing CSA in a smallholder farming context. Our assessment shows that all tools reviewed here have a biophysical lens while looking at productivity, and largely ignore potential social (e.g., food security, gender) and economic (poverty) aspects of the sustainability of intensified production. Mitigation was also analyzed in all approaches but few tools go beyond greenhouse gas emissions to analyse environmental sustainability (for example water quality, soil health, ecosystem services) more generically. Climate change adaptation was the CSA pillar with the weakest representation within the approaches reviewed here. Based on an overview of recent advantages in work focusing on CSA our key recommendations are (i) to make better use of recent advances in indicator development for sustainability assessments, including work on quantification of water and land footprints in relation to farm management; (ii) to use household level analyses to quantify pathways from productivity toward food security and improved nutrition as well as descripting drivers of adoption of adaptation options; and (iii) to use recent advances in system specific quantification of greenhouse gas emissions through both LMIC focused modeling and empirical work.

Integrated-Smart Agriculture: Contexts and Assumptions for a Broader Concept

“…It is important, namely through the extension services to assess and work the perceptions of the farmers about the smart practices in the farms, because this is decisive to achieve the objectives intended by the governments, including in terms of sustainability. In addition, some studies argue that the CSA concept has a narrow perspective about the current farming contexts and a wider debate is needed [20], involving interdisciplinary researchers [21] and using recent sustainability indicators, namely those related with the socioeconomic dimensions [22]. These findings support the thesis argued in this study that a broader concept is needed, in a more integrated perspective, to capture the several relationships between the smart agriculture and the sustainability.…”

“…CSA is an approach to the management of landscapes with the purpose of adapting crop and animal production to the climate changes originated by the human action on the planet. However, some researchers argue that the CSA concept is a narrow approach about the current farming contexts and a broader statement [20], involving interdisciplinary dimensions [21], and using recent sustainability indicators [22] is needed. For that, a systematic literature review was carried out based on the PRISMA approach and on a preliminary bibliometric analysis.…”

Climate-Smart Agriculture and Trade-Offs With Biodiversity and Crop Yield

“…Climate smart agriculture (CSA) has been developed as a climate adaptation framework for multiple aspects of agriculture, from field-level practices to food supply chains (Venkatramanan and Shah, 2019). CSA implementation has targeted developing regions such as the sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) (Neufeldt et al, 2013), which are most vulnerable to climate change and have limited capacity to cope, and invest in adaptive institutions and technologies (Fankhauser and McDermott, 2014;Porter et al, 2015;van Wijk et al, 2020). The primary goal of CSA is to achieve triple wins by contributing to three objectives; increasing productivity, increasing the resilience of food production, and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions (Lipper et al, 2018).…”

“…The primary goal of CSA is to achieve triple wins by contributing to three objectives; increasing productivity, increasing the resilience of food production, and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions (Lipper et al, 2018). However, there are gaps in evaluating the success of CSA approaches as studies have predominantly focussed on productivity outcomes (Dinesh et al, 2015;Rosenstock et al, 2019;van Wijk et al, 2020). In a limited number of cases, investigations of the resilience benefits have also been linked to productivity gains, where surplus food minimized the effects of climate impacts and increased the resilience of farmers (Dinesh et al, 2015;van Wijk et al, 2020).…”

Is Agriculture Always a GHG Emitter? A Combination of Eddy Covariance and Life Cycle Assessment Approaches to Calculate C Intake and Uptake in a Kiwifruit Orchard

“…A growing consciousness about the opportunity to promote farm management actions able to preserve environmental, landscape and social values in the rural society has been emerging in the last decade [1][2][3][4], in parallel with the shortage of non-renewable resources and climate change issues. Agriculture is now strongly solicited to move towards a climate smart-based strategy [5] addressing sustainability, adaptation, and mitigation while aligned to MDGs of climate action [6].…”