Assessing the Performance of Agricultural Development Investments A Practical Guide using the SIPmath™ Standard

Rosenstock T, Lamanna C, Savage S, O’Neil D, Shepherd K. 2021. Assessing the Performance of Agricultural Development Investments A Practical Guide using the SIPmath™ Standard. CCAFS Working paper no.414. Wageningen, the Netherlands: CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS).

The global community must make significant investments to address climate change and build resilience in agricultural systems. Within climate-smart agriculture investment portfolios, all sizable projects face uncertainty and risk and must be adaptively managed to achieve success.[1]–[4]. This paper presents notes for calibrating a user-friendly tool to screen and compare investment options: The Climate-Smart Agriculture Investment Plan (CSAIP) Cost Benefit-Analysis (CBA) Tool. The CSAIP-CBA models a 20-year period following investment implementation and uses a probabilistic approach to account for uncertainty in project costs and benefits subject to risks and adoption barriers. The model includes measures for number of beneficiaries, adoption rates, estimated impacts, and budget and costs while also considering risks and GHG emissions. Implementation examples of the CSAIP-CBA tool are drawn from investment portfolios prepared for Ghana and Burkina Faso; these suggest that carbon pricing and adoption rate assumptions should be considered when prioritizing investments.