Driven by the need to produce more food for an ever-increasing population that is further marred with declining and degrading natural resource base, adapting to and mitigating climate change have posed a big challenge. It is an established fact that in agriculture, fertilizers, flooded rice cultivation, energy use in irrigation, tillage, and enteric emissions from ruminant animals are the main contributors of greenhouse gases, which accounts to about one-fourth of the total emissions. The evolution of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) emerged as a scientific response to this multi-headed hydra, which helps achieve higher production with reduced emission. The fact remains that the small farm holders of South Asia, who are already facing several non-climatic stresses, have limited capacity to adopt new technologies. There are a host of barriers in the form of limited access to natural resources, information, finance, and above all, low human capital that limit the adoption of technology. The global community is aware of these climate change challenges and has initiated programs to overcome these challenges across the world. In this context, and to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) related to climate change mitigation and adaptation, there is a need for evidence-based research that have the potential to bring about transformative change in agriculture and food systems.

Consortium for Scaling-up Climate Smart Agriculture in South Asia (C-SUCSeS) is a four-year joint initiative between South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Agriculture Center (SAC), International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and the SAARC Development Fund (SDF). The program aims to foster partnership and cooperation between SAARC, National Agricultural Research and Extension Systems (NARES), IFPRI, and SAARC governments on the Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) agenda. The project also intends to support agricultural researchers’ to generate and facilitate delivery of technological solutions to smallholder and women farmers, with a specific priority on the intensification and resilience of smallholder agriculture, contributing, inter alia, to increasing water management efficiency, promote innovative, pro-poor approaches and technologies with demonstrated scaling-up potential, strengthen partners’ institutional and policy capacities, enhance policy engagement, and generate and share knowledge.

This book discusses various climate smart agro-technologies, their technical and economic feasibility across heterogeneous agro-climatic conditions, assessing farmers’ willingness to adopt those technologies, impact of climate smart technology in agricultural production and possible policy and investment opportunities to upscale it. Containing eight chapters, the book starts with a discussion about the methodological aspects of priority setting of the farm technologies across various regions of South Asia including Eastern Indo-Gangetic plain, Western Indo-Gangetic Plain and arid regions. Using data from field based trials and expert solicitations, the book next deliberates on a list of feasible technologies, assessed by constructing climate smart Feasibility Index. Further on, there is an analysis, using stated preference method, of the behaviour of farmers in adopting climate smart technologies. Preference of women farmers has been given a special focus in this book. After discussing the method priority setting of the farm technologies, impact of climate smart technologies has been analysed using real time data. Government policies have been reviewed with the view of achieving climate smart agriculture in South Asia. The book also describes the optimization modelling framework for investment allocation and technology prioritization. The model integrates both the bio-physical and the economic optimization model to capture the agro-climatic heterogeneity within the region and the variability of technical feasibility across regions and crops. Results of this model will help policy makers to identify how much to invest, where to invest and what technologies to prioritize for investments.

This brief draws on three cases to show how the private sector contributes to the conceptualisation, design, delivery and evaluation of climate-smart agricultural interventions and can help bring them to scale. Engaging the private sector in CSA interventions enhances the applicability – and thus the sustainability of interventions, increases uptake and delivers a triple win for donors, beneficiaries and the private sector. They emphasise that private-sector players will be more likely to engage in scaling-up of CSA when they can see a compelling business case to justify their investments.

This document reports on the concepts driving the scientific activities of FAO's Mitigation of Climate Change in Agriculture Program's (MICCA) pilot projects in East Africa. It provides results from the research, briefly describes the analytical approaches used and concludes with key messages relevant to discussions on climate-smart agriculture (CSA). The MICCA pilot projects aim to help mainstream CSA in the region by identifying, verifying and scaling up farm management practices that can both increase productivity and set smallholder farmers on a pathway toward emitting fewer greenhouse gases (GHGs) per unit of produce, where possible. As there are many unknowns about what farming approaches are best for reaching CSA's multiple objectives, the underlying premise of the MICCA pilot projects is that strong linkages between science and development are essential to the expansion of CSA in developing countries. The scientific approach that was followed permits a few general messages and suggestions for future efforts on "research to inform policy" that are aimed at quantifying the parameters of potential CSA practices and their implications at nested scales.

This book addresses an important topic of food security in South Asia with specific reference to climate change. Of the 1 billion food insecure people in the world, more than 30% are in South Asia. The problem of food insecurity may be exacerbated by the projected climate change especially because of the water scarcity caused by rapid melting of the glaciers in the Himalayas and increase in variability in monsoonal rains and frequency of extreme events. Furthermore, large populations of Bangladesh and other coastal regions may be displaced by sea level rise. Thus, this volume addresses recommended land use and soil/water/crop/vegetation management practices which would enable land managers to adapt to climate disruption by enhancing soil/ecosystem/social resilience. In addition to biophysical factors, this book also addresses the issues related to human dimensions including social, ethnical and political considerations.

Ending poverty and stabilizing climate change will be two unprecedented global achievements and two major steps toward sustainable development. But the two objectives cannot be considered in isolation: they need to be jointly tackled through an integrated strategy. This report brings together those two objectives and explores how they can more easily be achieved if considered together. It examines the potential impact of climate change and climate policies on poverty reduction. It also provides guidance on how to create a “win-win†? situation so that climate change policies contribute to poverty reduction and poverty-reduction policies contribute to climate change mitigation and resilience building. The key finding of the report is that climate change represents a significant obstacle to the sustained eradication of poverty, but future impacts on poverty are determined by policy choices: rapid, inclusive, and climate-informed development can prevent most short-term impacts whereas immediate pro-poor, emissions-reduction policies can drastically limit long-term ones.