Abstract
Climate change impacts on agriculture have become evident, and threaten the achievement of global food security. On the other hand, the agricultural sector itself is a cause of climate change, and if actions are not taken, the sector might impede the achievement of global climate goals. Science-policy engagement efforts are crucial to ensure that scientific findings from agricultural research for development inform actions of governments, private sector, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international development partners, accelerating progress toward global goals. However, knowledge gaps on what works limit progress. In this paper, we analyzed 34 case studies of science-policy engagement efforts, drawn from six years of agricultural research for development efforts around climate-smart agriculture by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). Based on lessons derived from these case studies, we critically assessed and refined the program theory of the CCAFS program, leading to a revised and improved program theory for science-policy engagement for agriculture research for development under climate change. This program theory offers a pragmatic pathway to enhance credibility, salience and legitimacy of research, which relies on engagement (participatory and demand-driven research processes), evidence (building scientific credibility while adopting an opportunistic and flexible approach) and outreach (effective communication and capacity building).
Highlights
The agricultural sector is at the intersection of three major challenges
We address the question: in the context of achieving climate change and food security goals, what are the success factors for science-policy engagement in AR4D in relation to climate-smart agriculture (CSA), to inform policies and realize development outcomes? The empirical insights which we present will be from developing country contexts, where such empirical insights into science-policy interfaces are limited [14]
Researchers at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) engaged in East African policy processes to scale up climate-smart banana-coffee intercropping systems discovered that “The higher up you go in terms of the innovation the more you have to understand complexity and the more important it becomes to understand your leverage points
Summary
The agricultural sector is at the intersection of three major challenges. Firstly, all aspects of food security (availability, access, utilization and price stability) are affected by climate change [1] and adaptation efforts are needed to achieve food security and secure rural livelihoods. The concept of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) responds to these triple challenges, by sustainably increasing productivity and enhancing achievement of food security goals, enhancing resilience, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions where possible [9] These outcomes are addressed in a context-specific manner as their relevance will vary in different contexts [9]. Our findings have practical implications, with CCAFS initiating a second phase, involving a proposed research investment of USD 388 million from 2017–2022 [19], to enable the program to effectively achieve its goals of helping 11 million farm households adopt CSA, assisting 9 million people out of poverty, improving the food and nutritional security of 5.5 million people, and reducing agriculture-related greenhouse gas emissions by 0.16 Gt CO2-e/year [19]
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