| dc.description.abstract | Agriculture remains vital to the economy of most African countries and its development has significant implications for food security and poverty reduction in the region. Increase in agricultural production over the past decades has mainly been due to land area expansion, with very little change in production techniques and limited improvement in yields. Currently one in four people remains malnourished in Africa.
Land tenure insecurity for millions of smallholder farmers, including women, declining soil fertility, degraded ecosystems, poor market access, inadequate funding and inadequate infrastructure development continue to hinder agricultural development in Africa. These challenges are expected to be further exacerbated by climate change which has emerged as one of the major threats to agricultural and economic development in Africa. The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment report indicates that Africa’s climate is already changing and the impacts are already been felt. Although the UNFCCC places great emphasis on mitigation efforts (reducing greenhouse gas emissions and creating carbon sinks) the impact on climate change will not be seen immediately even if the most effective emission reduction measures are implemented. Therefore, developing adaptation mechanisms to deal with the negative effects of climate change must be a high priority.
With the SDGs, the world is committing to “end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture”, “ensure availability and sustainable management of water” and at the same time as “take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts”. In agriculture, these challenges and aspirations must be addressed together and simultaneously. Agriculture in the coming decades must feed the continent, serve as the engine of growth and adapt to climate change. Climate-smart agriculture
(CSA) puts these conditions at the heart of transformational change in agriculture by concurrently pursuing increased productivity and resilience for food security while fostering mitigation where possible. CSA integrates all three dimensions of sustainable development and is aimed at (1) sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and incomes; (2) adapting and building resilience to climate change from the farm to national levels; and (3) developing opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture compared with past trends. It is an approach to identify the most suitable strategies according to national and local priorities and conditions to meet these three objectives. There is no such thing as an agricultural practice that is climate smart per se. Whether or not a particular practice or production system is climate smart depends upon the particular local climatic, biophysical, socio-economic and development context, which determines how far a particular practice or system can deliver on productivity increase, resilience and mitigation benefits.
Ecosystem functions, including biodiversity and water services, are key to increasing• resource efficiency and productivity and ensuring resilience. They are even more critical under the new realities of climate change. Ecosystem Based Adaptation (EBA)-driven agriculture linked to viable supply and demand side value chains, has an important role to play in developing an agricultural sector that is well integrated to the broader landscape, is climate resilient and environmentally and socially sustainable.
For Africa to reap the potential benefits CSA, concrete actions must be taken to: enhance the evidence base to underpin strategic choices, promote and facilitate wider adoption by farmers of appropriate technologies; develop institutional arrangements to support, apply ii and scale-out CSA from the farm level to the agricultural landscape level; manage tradeoffs in perspectives of farmers and policymakers; strengthen technical, analytical and implementation capacities; ensure policy frameworks and public investments are supportive of CSA; develop and implement effective risk-sharing schemes.
Information relating to the investment needs for agriculture and climate finance is limited, and may not include all related investment needs. Available literature provided an estimate of cumulated needs for agriculture investment in sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, and the Near East over the period 2005/7-2050, amounting to approximately US$ 2.1 trillion, or USD 48.5 billion per year. The amount of annual investment needed to adapt agriculture to climate change is comparatively low, as the expenditure required to counteract the negative impacts of climate change on nutrition are estimated to be only USD 3 billion per year. For African countries, climate change adaptation is considered to be more important than mitigation, but agricultural mitigation practices can provide adaptation synergies, justifying investment in mitigation. In particular in the livestock sector, improved management practices can result in both increased productivity and substantial reductions in emissions. If the African mitigation potential of 265 million tCO2 per year up to 2030 is to be harnessed (e.g. through cropland management, grazing land management and the restoration of degraded lands), it will require investments of USD 2.6-5.3 billion per year (at a carbon price of USD 10-20 per ton). An additional 812 million t CO2/year can be mitigated through preventing deforestation driven by agricultural expansion, through forest conservation combined with sustainable intensification practices that are capable of achieving food security. Avoiding 75% of total deforestation in Africa has an additional cost of USD 8.1- 16.2 billion per year. However, these estimates do not take into account additional costs, such as research and capacity building, which must be equally financed to ensure that research-based evidence informs decision making.
Financing for CSA needs to be scaled up considerably. Climate financing mechanisms need to give more attention to agriculture and CSA and the sector’s particular opportunity of combining adaptation and mitigation benefits while enhancing food security. Strengthening capacities of African countries to access these funds is also essential in this context. The main financing source for public investment in CSA, however, will be the regular agricultural development budget. CSA should not be treated as an “add on” approach. Rather, the approach adopted within the context of CAADP to screen agricultural investments in the National Agricultural Investment Plans (NAIPs) with a climate smart lens to strengthen the climate-smartness of investment plans and programmes and pursue resource mobilization for their implementation should be further strengthened.
Actions are required from a broad range of stakeholders from government and the public sector, private sector, academia and research, NGOs and CSOs among others as implied in SDG 17, and a practical platform for their engagement and delivery of solutions. Some opportunities are emerging for promoting CSA approaches in Africa. At the 23rd ordinary session of the African Union held in June 2014 in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, African leaders endorsed the inclusion of CSA in the NEPAD programme on agriculture and climate change. The session also led to the development of the African Climate Smart Agriculture Coordination Platform which is expected to collaborate with Regional Economic Communities (RECs) and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in targeting 25 million farm households by 2025. Moreover, The NEPAD Heads of State and Government Orientation Committee at its 31st session also welcomed the innovative partnership between NPCA and major global NGOs to strengthen grass-root adaptive iii capacity to climate change and boost agricultural productivity. The meeting requested NEPAD Planning and Coordinating Agency (NPCA) in collaboration with FAO to provide urgent technical assistance to AU Member States to implement the CSA programme and that the African Development Bank (AfDB) and partners should provide support to African countries on investments in CSA. | en_US |
