Climate change adaptation is a high priority for climate vulnerable countries like Ethiopia. At the farm and village level, subsistence agriculture communities survive on a year-to-year basis, and the productivity of the coming season’s crops is typically too important and is often too uncertain to allow for adaptation planning on the decades-long time horizon of climate change projections. Therefore Climate Smart Agriculture technologies that integrates productivity, resilience and mitigation are very important.

 

The project team have recognized that a three year project like this is not sufficient to test their hypothesis fully, but the project team reports, that they implemented a sustainable institutional infrastructure that will be used to study resilience over longer time periods. Many CSA practices incur establishment and maintenance costs that are not affordable by subsistence farmers. It also requires a considerable time before farmers benefit from them. Therefore, a long-term support and subsidy system is essential for sustainable future.

 

Establishing climate smart villages (CSV) and implementing climate smart agriculture (CSA) are both knowledge & capital intensive and require long-term support. Subsistence farmers found it hard to innovate and invest in better land management and climate smart agriculture. Therefore, the skill and capacity building effort should be location-specific and provided by very senior and senior experts and researchers.

 

Further scaling up of best sustainable green technologies and approaches will be only materialized at local level by establishing business model enterprises outside CSVs will be a viable option to expand CSA practices.

 

 1) Establish a clear decision-making processes and transparency among the lead offices and institutions (DMU, Agriculture, environment, cooperative, NGO, )  to manage and coordinate the climate-smart agriculture at community levels,

2)  Establish and facilitate a platforms  for stakeholder engagement and consultation, including the private sector and ensuring the inclusion of small holder farmers.

3)  Provide climate information services that was not adequately available and accessible to farmers and other agricultural decision makers.

4)  Produce agreed-upon vision and goals that balance food security, adaptation and mitigation at village level and regional levels. 

5)  Expedite additional financial resources including rural credit that will be accessible to individual farmers.  

6) Give more focus to renewable energy and backyard fruit and vegetable development that enhances nutrition and food security at local levels.  

7) Scaling up best sustainable green technologies and approaches by establishing business model enterprises outside CSVs will be a viable option to expand CSA practices.

Based on the PEER project, the project PI reports, that local government has adopted  the conceptual and analytical framework to plan and implement a Climate Compatible Development (CCD) which is  a new concept that bridges climate change adaptation, mitigation and community-based development (‘Triple wins’).  Universities have also adopted the research approach to establish and promote Climate Smart Villages in other areas.