What works where

ICRAF. 2019. What works where. ICRAF Brief. CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS).

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an approach to simultaneously addresses challenges of food security and climate change. It aims to increase agricultural productivity in sustainable ways, improve climate resilience, and mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions or sequester carbon. CSA promotes solutions relevant to specific contexts rather than prescribing specific interventions, thus offering the flexibility needed to create the necessary change in many locations. One of the key advantages of CSA, its flexibility, also makes programming and implementation challenging. There are no one-size-fits-all CSA solutions. CSA interventions are inherently place-based and time-specific, because yields, soil health, economics, and farmer’s needs and capacities vary according to the environmental and social conditions, which change over time. This brief targets policy makers and program developers and offers insights into how to determine which CSA practices are most suitable to the local conditions. We present participatory methodologies and a data-driven approach used in the intervention selection process. Both approaches offer ways to determine which CSA practices are likely to work best in specific contexts, thus increasing the efficiency of development funding and improving the lives and livelihoods of more people.