Editing IPCC:AR6/SRCCL/Chapter-5 (section)

==== 5.6.4.2 Climate-smart agriculture ====

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‘Climate-smart agriculture’ (CSA) is an approach developed to tackle current food security and climate change challenges in a joint and synergistic fashion (Lipper et al. 2014 <sup>[[#fn:r1098|1098]]</sup> ; Aggarwal et al. 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r1099|1099]]</sup> ; FAO 2013c <sup>[[#fn:r1100|1100]]</sup> ). CSA is designed to be a pathway towards development and food security built on three pillars: increasing productivity and incomes, enhancing resilience of livelihoods and ecosystems and reducing, and removing GHG emissions from the atmosphere (FAO 2013c <sup>[[#fn:r1101|1101]]</sup> ). Climate-smart agricultural systems are integrated approaches to the closely linked challenges of food security, development, and climate change adaptation/mitigation to enable countries to identify options with maximum benefits and those where trade-offs need management.

Many agricultural practices and technologies already provide proven benefits to farmers’ food security, resilience and productivity (Dhanush and Vermeulen 2016 <sup>[[#fn:r1102|1102]]</sup> ). In many cases, these can be implemented by changing the suites of management practices. For example, enhancing soil organic matter to improve the water-holding capacity of agricultural landscapes also sequesters carbon. In annual cropping systems, changes from conventional tillage practices to minimum tillage can convert the system from one that either provides adaptation or mitigation benefits or neither to one that provides both adaptation and mitigation benefits (Sapkota et al. 2017a <sup>[[#fn:r1103|1103]]</sup> ; Harvey et al. 2014a <sup>[[#fn:r1104|1104]]</sup> ).

Increasing food production by using more fertilisers in agricultural fields could maintain crop yield in the face of climate change, but may result in greater overall GHG emissions. But increasing or maintaining the same level of yield by increasing nutrient-use- efficiency through adoption of better fertiliser management practices could contribute to both food security and climate change mitigation (Sapkota et al. 2017a <sup>[[#fn:r1105|1105]]</sup> ).

Mixed farming systems integrating crops, livestock, fisheries and agroforestry could maintain crop yield in the face of climate change, help the system to adapt to climatic risk, and minimise GHG emissions by increasingly improving the nutrient flow in the system (Mbow et al. 2014a <sup>[[#fn:r1106|1106]]</sup> ; Newaj et al. 2016 <sup>[[#fn:r1107|1107]]</sup> ; Bioversity International 2016 <sup>[[#fn:r1108|1108]]</sup> ). Such systems can help diversify production and/or incomes and support efficient and timely use of inputs, thus contributing to increased resilience, but they require local seed and input systems and extension services. Recent whole farm modelling exercises have shown the economic and environmental (reduced GH emissions, reduced land use) benefits of integrated crop-livestock systems (Gil et al. 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r1109|1109]]</sup> ) compared different soy-livestock systems across multiple economic and environmental indicators, including climate resilience. However, it is important to note that potential benefits are very context specific.

Although climate-smart agriculture involves a holistic approach, some argue that it narrowly focuses on technical aspects at the production level (Taylor 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r1110|1110]]</sup> ; Newell and Taylor 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r1111|1111]]</sup> ). Studying barriers to the adoption and diffusion of technological innovations for climate-smart agriculture in Europe, Long et al. (2016) <sup>[[#fn:r1112|1112]]</sup> found that there was incompatibility between existing policies and climate-smart agriculture objectives, including barriers to the adoption of technological innovations.

Climate-smart agricultural systems recognise that the implementation of the potential options will be shaped by specific country contexts and capacities, as well as enabled by access to better information, aligned policies, coordinated institutional arrangements and flexible incentives and financing mechanisms (Aggarwal et al. 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r1113|1113]]</sup> ). Attention to underlying socio-economic factors that affect adoption of practices and access to technologies is crucial for enhancing biophysical processes, increasing productivity, and reducing GHG emissions at scale. The Government of India, for example, has started a programme of climate resilient villages (CRV) as a learning platform to design, implement, evaluate and promote various climate-smart agricultural interventions, with the goal of ensuring enabling mechanisms at the community level (Srinivasa Rao et al. 2016 <sup>[[#fn:r1114|1114]]</sup> ).

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