Policy Brief : Opportunities and Challenges for Climate-Smart Agriculture in Africa
Agriculture is the economic foundation of many Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries, employing about 60 percent of the workforce and contributing an average of 30 percent of gross domestic product. Yet agricultural growth rates for SSA declined in th...
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| Format: | Report |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/111461468202139478/Policy-brief-opportunities-and-challenges-for-climate-smart-agriculture-in-Africa http://hdl.handle.net/10986/26079 |
| Summary: | Agriculture is the economic foundation
of many Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries, employing about
60 percent of the workforce and contributing an average of
30 percent of gross domestic product. Yet agricultural
growth rates for SSA declined in the 2000 and food
insecurity remains a concern, with malnourishment only
dropping from 34 to 30 percent in two decades. Various
projections suggest that food production must increase by
70-100 percent by 2050 to meet the demands of a world with 9
billion people and changing diets. In SSA this will require
considerable investments in agricultural
development-research, institutional support and
infrastructural development. Ensuring food security under a
changing climate is one of the major challenges of our era.
African agriculture is highly vulnerable to climate change.
Climate-smart agriculture seeks to increase productivity in
an environmentally and socially sustainable way, strengthen
farmers' resilience to climate change, and reduce
agriculture's contribution to climate change by
reducing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing carbon
storage on farmland. Climate-smart agriculture includes
proven practical techniques-such as mulching, intercropping,
conservation agriculture, crop rotation, integrated
crop-livestock management, agroforestry, improved grazing,
and improved water management-but also innovative practices
such as better weather forecasting, early warning systems
and risk insurance. Climate-smart agriculture fully
incorporates attention to climate risk management.
Climate-smart agriculture offers some unique opportunities
to tackle food security, adaptation and mitigation
objectives. African countries will particularly benefit from
climate-smart agriculture given the central role of
agriculture as a means to poverty alleviation and the major
negative impacts that climate change is likely to have on
the African continent. |
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