climate smart agriculture project: using policy and economic analysis as a basis for investment...

Climate Smart Agriculture Project: using policy and economic analysis as a basis for investment project design and decision-

making Economics and Policy Innovations for Climate-Smart

Agriculture Program – ESA

Romina Cavatassi – Bjorn Conrad Rome –Investment Days 17 December 2013

www.fao.org/climatechange/epic

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http://www.fao.org/climatechange/epic

http://www.fao.org/climatechange/epic/en/


OUTLINE OF THE PRESENTATION

• Background and rationale of the project

• Theory of change: the logic of the project

• How does it translate in practice

• Improving the building blocks of Investment proposal

• Moving Forward and conclusions

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BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE

• Research on natural resources and agriculture: solid and interesting results but unclear link with policy changes or real world terms

• Agriculture: key sector to address challenges of food security under climate change (sink and source)

• Ag growth effective means of poverty reduction

• Projected CC impacts: need adaptation in agriculture

• Mitigation can come through synergistic measures and be an additional source of finance

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The CSA project aims building evidence-based agricultural development strategies, policies and investment frameworks to:

1. sustainably increase agricultural productivity and incomes,

2. build resilience and the capacity of agricultural and food systems to adapt to climate change, and

3. seek opportunities to reduce and remove GHGs compatibly with their national food security and development goals.

CSA PROJECT

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Develop a policy environment & and agricultural investments to improve food security and provide resilience under climate uncertainty

NEEDS RESEARCH COMPONENT

POLICY SUPPORT COMPONENT

Project Framework OUTPUTS

Investment proposals

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1. Working in three countries: Malawi, Zambia and Viet Nam.

2. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of primary and secondary data at hh and community level + climate and geo-referenced data and institutional data to:

a) assess the situation, b) Identify CSA best options in terms of adaptation but

also mitigation and food security (i.e. yield response, cost

benefit analysis, calculate mitigation potential etc), c) understand barriers to CSA adoption d) Identify enabling factors

Feeding into investment 6


Identifying Best Practices

The natural approach to identifying CSA best practices is to examine proxies for the three pillars of CSA:

1. Productivity

2. Resilience

3. Carbon balances

•Performance on the 3 CSA dimensions is context specific: depends on the agro-ecological and socioeconomic contexts, and on the farming system it is being applied to.

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1. Coordination between climate change and agricultural policy (e.g. enhancing climate change and agricultural policy alignment in support of CSA, Supporting capacity to link

international and national policy issues)

2. Capacity development:

• Supporting master students, a PhD student and mentoring

• Implement training activities to agricultural frontline staff

• Support policy makers’ participation to UNFCCC negotiations

3. Collaboration with CCAFS: way forward and linking various project components

Overarching 8


Using scenarios to improve planning

• Decision makers critically review and adapt the scenarios to ensure that they are plausible, challenging and relevant to their concerns

• Then, the scenarios are used to challenge policies and investments • Plans can be made more concrete and elaborate by

conducting back-casting

• Stress-testing investment proposals in the context of multiple scenarios will help make them more concrete, flexible and feasible

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Develop a policy environment & and agricultural investments to improve food security and provide resilience under climate uncertainty

NEEDS RESEARCH COMPONENT

What are the barriers to adoption of CSA practices?

Legal & Institutional Appraisal: mapping institutional relationships and identifying constraints

What are the synergies and tradeoffs between food security, adaptation and

mitigation from ag. practices?

POLICY SUPPORT COMPONENT

Identifying where policy coordination at the national level is needed and how to

do it

Facilitating national participation/inputs to climate and ag international policy

process

Project Framework

Evidence Base

Strategic Framework & Policy Advice

OUTPUTS

Investment proposals

Capacity Building

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What are the policy levers to facilitate adoption and what will they cost?


Building an EPIC-based investment proposal

• Country ownership and engagement

• Dynamic baseline and robustness of investment

• Identification and selection of project activities

• Basis for systemic interventions

EPIC as a model for intra-FAO cooperation on investments?

refined investment

different investment

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Some examples: With climate information can target interventions...

Source:

(FAO, 2013)


The case of Zambia

Practices: Conservation Farming practices: minimum soil disturbance (MSD) and crop rotation(CR)

– MSD adoption remains very low: ~5-6% (sample size 4,187)

– Significant dis-adoption: ~90% of MSD adopters in 2004 abandoned it

– Adoption intensity is significantly higher for smallholders

Adoption: Strongest determinants

– Variability of rainfall

– Delays in the onset of rains

– Extension information

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Thank you! www.fao.org/climatechange/epic

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