Climate Week NYC Panel Event: Innovative Approaches for Scaling up Climate-Smart Agriculture

Dinh D, Hansen J. 2016. Innovative Approaches for Scaling up Climate-Smart Agriculture: Climate Week NYC Panel Event. CCAFS Workshop Report. Copenhagen, Denmark: CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS).

On 21 September 2016, the Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture (GACSA), the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), the CGIAR research program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) hosted a panel event on “Innovative Approaches for Scaling Up Climate-Smart Agriculture.” The event was held as part of New York Climate Week, and featured a panel of international experts. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is a vision and approach for sustainably transforming agriculture to be more productive and profitable, more resilient to climate across time scales, and part of the solution to the increasing greenhouse gas burden, in the face of a changing climate. The panel brought in a range of perspectives on how to achieve these often contextspecific challenges at scale. Panellists recognized that there no single solution to the challenge of ensuring a food-secure future in the face of a changing climate. But there are many innovations that have been demonstrated successfully, and provide lessons for scaling up. Panel presentations and subsequent discussion brought out several key points. Some of the most promising innovations for scaling up CSA—including climate information services, insurance, and support from the global food industry—go beyond farm-level technologies and practice to foster an enabling institutional environment. Costa Rica’s CSA strategy showcases how national policy can foster the CSA “triple win.” Finally, scaling up CSA – making smallholder agriculture more productive and resilient in the face of a changing climate, while reducing agriculture’s contribution to climate change – requires effective, sustained partnerships among governments, the private sector, the research community, and the development (including NGO) community.