National Policy for Climate-Smart Agriculture: Lessons from Brazil, Ethiopia & New Zealand

Agriculture, especially large-scale industrial agriculture, is often criticized for its major environmental impacts and general disregard for ecological health. That’s where climate-smart agriculture, or CSA, comes in. CSA seeks to increase production and livelihoods while decreasing environmental impacts and building resilience to climate change. The concept is gaining ground in the international community, and policy makers are beginning to discuss ways to incorporate climate-smart practices—for example, at the Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture Global Conference taking place at The Hague this week. Christine Negra’s writes on CGIAR’s Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security News Blog to shed light on the process of integrating CSA into national policy through 3 case studies drawn from the larger report, Integrated National Policy Approaches to Climate-Smart Agriculture: Insights from Brazil, Ethiopia, and New Zealand.

In the absence of clear international policy signals and strong global agreements, countries are figuring out how they can achieve a “triple win” of climate change adaptation, mitigation, and food security based on a pragmatic understanding of their unique economic, environmental, and institutional context.

The three countries profiled in this study have pursued integrated policy approaches for agriculture and related sectors. They differ dramatically in the size of their populations, economies, and land base, as well as their farming systems and political structures, yet for all three, agriculture is a critical component of international trade, climate change mitigation potential, and national culture. All three countries are pursuing agricultural development that relies on greater crop and livestock productivity rather than agricultural expansion or increasing livestock numbers.

Read the full post on National policy for climate-smart agriculture: insights from Brazil, Ethiopia and New Zealand to learn more about current CSA projects in this area. Also, check out EcoAgriculture Partner’s flier on how Climate-smart agricultural systems build food security while addressing climate change.