Scaling up climate-smart agriculture in South Asia: Synthesis report

Book excerpt: South Asia is primarily an agrarian economy facing the five transitions of population growth, urbanization, increasing income, shift toward animal-based food, and climate change simultaneously. In the process of ensuring food sufficiency under the intertwined challenges posed by these ongoing transitions, the boundaries of natural resources have been violated with adverse impacts on the health of the ecosystem. The application of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is viewed as an important strategy for imparting resilience to the food system in addressing the interconnected issues of food security through improved productivity and adaptation to and mitigation of the impacts of climate change. International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) South Asia, in collaboration with its national partners, charted out and pursued studies for the policy and institutions required in upscaling CSA for the extensive South Asia region taking these broad CSA objectives in consideration. The important subthemes of this report include prioritization of CSA technologies for different agroclimatic regions, government policies for CSA, index-based insurance and climate risk management, and climate-smart investment and its implications on food security and farmers’ income.