Many
African smallholder farmers and farm communities experience low crop and animal
yields but are unaware that this is partly as a result of climate change.
In
countries like Ghana, many are not aware of what to do to remedy the situation
of erratic rainfall, drought and other unfavorable weather conditions.
Agriculture
across the continent needs to undergo a significant transformation to meet the
multiple challenges of climate change, food insecurity, malnutrition, poverty
and environmental degradation.
A
proposed means of achieving such improvements is increased use of a
climate-smart agriculture (CSA) approach which emphasizes the use of farming
techniques that: increase yields, reduce vulnerability to climate change, and
reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Mrs
Estherine Fotabong, the NEPAD Agency’s Director of Programme, says the ability of farmers to
apply new technologies and innovations is an important determinant of CSA
adoption.
“Transformative
adaptation needs to not only be at larger scale with new innovations, bold
enough to take political steps that may not be easy or quick but also
transformative adaptation needs to be integrated fully into the big agriculture
questions that will really transform Africa’s agriculture,” she said.
The decision of
African Union to set up an African Climate Smart Agriculture Coordination
Platform is a means to pursue the vision to have at least 25 million farm
households more practicing Climate Smart Agriculture by 2025.
The
2nd Africa CSA Alliance
Forum holding in Nairobi, Kenya, is focused on addressing major hindrances
limiting the adoption of climate-smart agricultural (CSA) practices among smallholder
farmers.
Under the theme “From Agreement to Action:
Implementing African INDCs for Growth and Resilience in Agriculture”, the Forum
is looking at the INDCs transitioning to Nationally Determined
Contributions (NDCs) with key implications for Africa’s development, especially
agriculture.
The Intended Nationally
Determined Contributions (INDCs) represent country-level programmes for climate
action presented to the UNFCCC ahead of the COP21 climate talks in December
2015, which produced the historic Paris Agreement on climate change.
Dr
Abebe Haile Gabriel, FAO Deputy Regional Representative for Africa, has maintained
that countries need support in their INDCs, through which the plight of climate
smart agriculture came to light.
The
plight of smallholder farmers was also brought to the fore with a call to
promote climate smart agriculture success stories and award them opportunities
to sustainably adopt climate smart practices.
Mrs
Fotabong stressed that knowledge-sharing is key in agriculture and rural
transformation, through which indigenous knowledge should not be ignored.
“Communities
should be fully capacitated in the various areas of crop management, community
mobilisation and empowerment, disaster preparedness and have access to robust
technologies and information such as new crop varieties that are drought and
disease tolerant,” she emphasized.
This she
said should be the collective effort of government, private sector, NGOs, civil
society and donors to ensure communities have greater ability to cope and adapt
to climate change and extreme weather events and thus achieve rural livelihoods
and food security.
Climate
Change can no longer be treated as just an environmental challenge but as a
holistic sustainable development challenge that impacts on natural systems,
physical and social infrastructure and key economic sectors, said Willy Bett of Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries.
“The
overarching climate change-related challenge in agriculture is to sustainably
increase food supply to accommodate a rapidly growing population while
preserving a safe operating space for humanity by avoiding drastic
environmental damage,” he said.
By Kofi Adu
Domfeh, in Nairobi-Kenya
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