Working to enhance political interest and will among policy-makersZambia

Background

In 2010, Zambia was the first country to receive funding from the Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR), a USD 1.2 billion funding window under the Climate Investment Funds. The programme in Zambia is implemented by the government with the World Bank as lead funding partner, and receives technical support from a variety of agencies. The current phase, which entails USD 36 million of funding, runs from 2013 to 2020, with three main pillars: participatory adaptation (with a strong focus on agricultural resilience and subnational planning), climate resilient infrastructure, and strategic support.

Relationship to CSA

The programme is mentioned here for the latter component: strategic support. Since the outset, the PPCR in Zambia has placed emphasis on “winning over” national policy-makers to the climate change agenda in order to catalyze de facto support to climate-resilient policies. This has included collaboration with parliamentarians to provide knowledge and research on the impacts of climate change on agricultural production, and other sectors in the national economy. So far, the focus has been on the planning and financing ministries, in an effort to relocate policy development on climate from technical agencies to key decision-making departments. The programme also supports the Zambia Civil Society Network in managing a tracking tool, designed to monitor and publicize the government’s de facto climate-related expenditures.

Impact and lessons learned

The programme has played a key role in ensuring that climate resilience is now mainstreamed into Zambia’s major development plans and sector policies - most notably in agriculture, livestock and energy. In particular, the National Agriculture Investment Plan identifies a range of strategies, including Conservation Agriculture and CSA. Additionally, non-donor government expenditure on climate resilience doubled from 2014 to 2015, although it remains at only USD 1.5 million. Certain trade-offs remain evident: while climate concerns appear to have grown among policy makers large-scale energy and infrastructure issues still receive the most attention. Moreover, the strong focus on national policy-makers has meant that the engagement of decision-makers at sub-national levels has been cursory so far, constraining progress on the ground.

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CCAFS Climate-Smart Agriculture 101

Case Studies

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The basics

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an integrative approach to address these interlinked challenges of food security and climate change, that explicitly aims for three objectives:

A. Sustainably increasing agricultural productivity, to support equitable increases in farm incomes, food security and development;

B. Adapting and building resilience of agricultural and food security systems to climate change at multiple levels; and

C. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture (including crops, livestock and fisheries).

Entry points

Agriculture affects and is affected by climate change in a wide range of ways and there are numerous entry points for initiating CSA programmes or enhancing existing activities. Productivity, mitigation and adaptation actions can take place at different technological, organizational, institutional and political levels. To help you navigate these myriad entry points we have grouped them under three Thematic Areas: (i) CSA practices, (ii) CSA systems approaches, and (iii) Enabling environments for CSA. Each entry point is then described and analysed in terms of productivity, adoption and mitigation potential and is illustrated with cases studies, references and internet links for further information.

Develop a CSA plan

Planning for, implementing and monitoring CSA projects and programmes evolves around issues of understanding the context including identification of major problems/barriers and opportunities related to the focus of the programme; developing and prioritizing solutions and designing plans; implementation; and monitoring and evaluation. Most major development agencies have their own framework for project and programme formulation and management but CCAFS has developed a specific approach for planning, implementing and assessing CSA projects and programme called CSA plan. CSA plan was developed to provide a guide for operationalizing CSA planning, implementation and monitoring at scale. CSA plan consist of four major components: (1) Situation analysis; (2) Targeting and prioritizing; (3) Program support; and (4) Monitoring. evaluation and learning.

Finance

To meet the objectives of CSA, such as agricultural development, food security and climate change adaptation and mitigation, a number of potential funding sources are available. For instance, climate finance sources may be used to leverage agriculture finance and mainstream climate change into agricultural investments. This section offers an overview of potential sources of funding for activities in climate-smart agriculture (CSA) at national, regional and international levels and for a number of different potential ‘clients’ including governments, civil society, development organizations and others. Additionally, it includes options to search among a range of funding opportunities according to CSA focus area, sector and financing instrument.

Resource library

CSA Guide provides a short and concise introduction and overview of the multifaceted aspects of climate-smart agriculture. At the same time it offers links to references and key resources that allows for further investigations and understanding of specific topics of interest. In the resource library we have gathered all the references, key resources, terms and questions in one place for a quick overview and easy access that can be used as a part of or independently of the other sections of the website. The resource library is divided into six sections; (1) References – list all publications, links and blogs referred to on the website; (2) Tools – list all the CSA tools presented on the website; (3) Key terms – explains the most important and frequently used terms related to CSA; (4) Frequently asked questions (FAQ) – provides a rapid overview of the most common questions asked on climate-smart agriculture; (5) About – where you can find out more about the purpose and structure of, as well as on the organizations and authors behind the website; (6) Contact.

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