Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA)

 Climate-Smart Agriculture

Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA)

Climate smart agriculture is a comprehensive strategy for managing farmlands, crops, livestock, and forests that counteracts the negative impacts of climate change on agricultural productivity.

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an approach that helps guide actions to transform agri-food systems towards green and climate resilient practices. CSA supports reaching internationally agreed goals such as the SDGs and the Paris Agreement. It aims to tackle three main objectives: sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and incomes; adapting and building resilience to climate change; and reducing and/or removing greenhouse gas emissions, where possible.

CSA supports the FAO Strategic Framework 2022-2031 based on the Four Betters: better production, better nutrition, a better environment and a better life for all, leaving no one behind. What constitutes a CSA practice is context-specific, depending on local socio-economic, environmental and climate change factors. FAO recommends the approach is implemented through five actions points: expanding the evidence base for CSA, supporting enabling policy frameworks, strengthening national and local institutions, enhancing funding, and financing options, and implementing CSA practices at field level.

Climate-smart agriculture refers to the integration of practices, policies, and institutions to address the challenges of climate change while sustainably increasing food production and achieving food security goals.

Background

Climate change and food insecurity are two complicated and interconnected challenges that the world must address. With global population projected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050, there is increasing pressure on production agriculture and supply chain management to reduce food insecurity (Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations [FAO], 2013). This challenge is made more difficult by global climate change, driven by increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GhG) concentrations, of which a significant proportion are attributable to agriculture (Environmental Protection Agency, 2024). Therefore, a heightened focus on sustainable agriculture systems is necessary to guarantee food security, improve environmental health, and respond to climate change; the concept of CSA intends to contribute to addressing this ultimate challenge.

Agricultural systems and practices referred to as CSA are assumed to address at least two of the interconnected challenges of feeding a growing population, adapting to climate change, and reducing environmental harm (The World Bank, 2024). However, the lack of a standardized framework to assess if CSA practices produce their desired benefits promotes an environment where the term CSA can be arbitrarily applied to any agricultural system or practice assumed to have a production, environmental, or climate benefit. For example, in 2024 the USDA added 15 practices to its climate-smart conservation list eligible for Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) funding, but many likely lack tangible climate benefits (Schechinger, 2024). To ensure the paradigm of CSA truly produces the tangible benefits needed to address food insecurity, environmental sustainability, and climate change, a standardized framework supported by global agricultural organizations should be adopted.

The 3 Pillars of Climate-Smart Agriculture

Any climate-smart program aims to:

• Improve farmer productivity, and as a result, livelihoods;
• Make farms more resilient to climate impacts they’re facing now, and to those likely to hit in the future;
• Where feasible, curb greenhouse gas emissions associated with growing food.

There are three main objectives of climate smart agriculture:

• Productivity. By enhancing crop and livestock production and farm profitability, climatically smart agriculture works to raise overall agricultural productivity and provide greater food security.
• Adaptation. Climate smart agriculture aims to fortify agricultural infrastructure against the destructive effects of global warming. This entails taking measures to minimize susceptibility to climate-related threats like floods, droughts, or extreme heat.
• Mitigation. One of the primary goals of climatically smart agriculture is to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere because of farming activities, including methane emissions from livestock, paddy rice cultivation, and synthetic fertilizer use.

Key characteristics of CSA

CSA addresses climate change: Contrary to conventional agricultural development, CSA systematically integrates climate change into the planning and development of sustainable agricultural systems.

CSA integrates multiple goals and manages trade-offs: Ideally, CSA produces triple-win outcomes: increased productivity, enhanced resilience and reduced emissions. But often it is not possible to achieve all three. Frequently, when it comes time to implement CSA, trade-offs must be made. This requires us to identify synergies and weigh the costs and benefits of different options based on stakeholder objectives identified through participatory approaches.

CSA maintains ecosystems services: Ecosystems provide farmers with essential services, including clean air, water, food and materials. It is imperative that CSA interventions do not contribute to their degradation. Thus, CSA adopts a landscape approach that builds upon the principles of sustainable agriculture but goes beyond the narrow sectoral approaches that result in uncoordinated and competing land uses, to integrated planning and management.

CSA has multiple entry points at different levels: CSA should not be perceived as a set of practices and technologies. It has multiple entry points, ranging from the development of technologies and practices to the elaboration of climate change models and scenarios, information technologies, insurance schemes, value chains and the strengthening of institutional and political enabling environments. As such, it goes beyond single technologies at the farm level and includes the integration of multiple interventions at the food system, landscape, value chain or policy level.

CSA is context specific: What is climate-smart in one-place may not be climate-smart in another, and no interventions are climate-smart everywhere or every time. Interventions must take into account how different elements interact at the landscape level, within or among ecosystems and as a part of different institutional arrangements and political realities. The fact that CSA often strives to reach multiple objectives at the system level makes it particularly difficult to transfer experiences from one context to another.

CSA engages women and marginalized groups: To achieve food security goals and enhance resilience, CSA approaches must involve the poorest and most vulnerable groups. These groups often live on marginal lands which are most vulnerable to climate events like drought and floods. They are, thus, most likely to be affected by climate change. Gender is another central aspect of CSA. Women typically have less access and legal right to the land which they farm, or to other productive and economic resources which could help build their adaptive capacity to cope with events like droughts and floods. CSA strives to involve all local, regional and national stakeholders in decision-making. Only by doing so, is it possible to identify the most appropriate interventions and form the partnerships and alliances needed to enable sustainable development.

CSA Technology

The widespread adoption of climate smart farming practices benefits the environment, boosts farmers’ livelihoods, and opens up new economic avenues. More specifically, these are a few of its advantages:

• Improving agricultural productivity. Climatically smart agriculture methods increase crop yields by optimizing the use of water, fertilizers, and other agricultural inputs. Farmers also prevent water and heat stress on their crops, keep their soil healthy and rich in nutrients and moisture, and reduce pest and disease damage. As a result, by embracing climate smart agriculture, farmers can raise yields while remaining resilient in the face of climate change.
• Cutting back on emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Conservation tillage, planting cover crops, using biochar in rural areas, and well-planned, precise fertilizer applications are only some of the climate smart farming methods recommended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture 

• Reducing pollution and other environmental hazards. Climate smart agriculture helps mitigate environmental damage by relying on eco-friendly methods. Conservation farming helps keep soils from eroding, preserve land fertility, and save local plant and animal life. Smart water management conserves water supplies by lowering unnecessary consumption. Organic farming and IPM reduce the need for harmful chemical treatments, which is important for maintaining a balanced biome. Carbon dioxide is taken out of the atmosphere and stored in agroforestry systems, mitigating climate change.

In a broad sense, climatically smart agriculture advocates a comprehensive approach that finds a middle ground between economic viability and environmental sustainability to protect ecosystems over the long run.