Iran faces environmental challenges such as erosion and extreme events, namely droughts and floods. These phenomena have frequently affected the country over the past decades and temperature rise has led to a more challenging situation. Iran started to implement national and provincial policies in the 1950s to cope with these phenomena. To provide an overview of Iran’s efforts to tackle land degradation and climate change, this paper examined through literature since 2000 the stakeholders’ policies, their interventions and obstacles to the mitigation of these environmental challenges.
Smallholder farmers in East Africa need information and knowledge on appropriate climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices, technologies, and institutional innovations in order to effectively adapt to changing climatic conditions and cope with climate variability. This paper assesses farmer adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices and innovation after being exposed to Farms of the Future Approach (FotF). First; we explore and assess the various CSA technologies and practices; including institutional innovations farmers are adopting.
Past studies showing that barriers to farmers’ adaptation behaviors are focused on their socio-economic factors and resource availability. Meanwhile, psychological and social considerations are sparingly mentioned, especially for the related studies in developing countries. This study investigates the impact of psychological factors and social appraisal on farmers’ behavioral intention to adopt adaptation measures for the aforementioned reason, due to climate change and not to anthropogenic climate change.
Organic agriculture has experienced remarkable growth in recent decades as societal interest in environmental protection and healthy eating has increased. Research has shown that relative to conventional agriculture, organic farming is more e cient in its use of non-renewable energy, maintains or improves soil quality, and has less of a detrimental e ect on water quality and biodiversity. Studies have had more mixed findings, however, when examining the impact of organic farming on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and climate change.
This study examines the influence of farmers’ social capital on their decisions to deal with climate change and climate variability in Burkina Faso. The study is based on a household survey conducted among 450 households, randomly selected from three communities in Burkina Faso.
Agricultural production is a crucial and fundamental aspect of a stable society in China that depends heavily on the climate situation. With the desire to achieve future sustainable development, China’s government is taking actions to adapt to climate change and to ensure food self-sufficiency.
Climate variability and change threaten and impact negatively on biodiversity, agricultural sustainability, ecosystems, and economic and social structures – factors that are all vital for human resilience and wellbeing. To cope with these challenges, embracing sustainability in food production is therefore essential. Practising sustainable agriculture is one way of ensuring sustainability in pro-poor farming communities in low-income countries.
A complex systems approach to innovation provides rich insights into the drivers, barriers, and key elements for innovation in rural systems. Through a case study of dry direct seeding (DDS) in smallholder systems in Laos, this article reveals a “perfect storm” of challenges and opportunities resulting in rapid adoption. Labour shortage, climate variability, and machinery availability are key factors.
Connecting science with policy has always been challenging for both scientists and policy makers. In Ghana, Mali and Senegal, multi-stakeholder national science-policy dialogue platforms on climate-smart agriculture (CSA) were setup to use scientificevidence to create awareness of climate change impacts on agriculture andadvocate for the mainstreaming of climate change and CSA into agriculturaldevelopment plans.
Agricultural innovation in low-income tropical countries contributes to a more effective and sustainable use of natural resources and reduces hunger and poverty through economic development in rural areas. Yet, despite numerous recent public and private initiatives to develop capacities for agricultural innovation, such initiatives are often not well aligned with national efforts to revive existing Agricultural Innovation Systems (AIS).