The framework is designed to assess resilience to specific challenges (specified resilience) as well as a farming system's capacity to deal with the unknown, uncertainty and surprise (general resilience). The framework provides a heuristic to analyze system properties, challenges (shocks, long-term stresses), indicators to measure the performance of system functions, resilience capacities and resilience-enhancing attributes. Capacities and attributes refer to adaptive cycle processes of agricultural practices, farm demographics, governance and risk management.
The Guide to Effective Collaborative Action is built on the foundation of 10 years' experience in transforming food and agricultural commodity systems by UNDP's Green Commodities Programme. It is broadening the application from support to commodity production to the transformation of food systems. The four building blocks of putting systems change into practice, integrated with backbone support and essential practices for stakeholder actions, provide a framework for Changing Systems through Collaborative Action.
Mountain agricultural systems (MASs) are multifunctional and multidimensional sociocultural systems. They are constantly influenced by many factors whose intensity and impacts are unpredictable. The recent Hindu Kush–Himalayan Assessment Report highlighted the need to integrate mountain perspectives into governance decisions on sustaining resources in the Hindu Kush–Himalayan region, emphasizing the importance of sustainable MASs.
This chapter proposes a network-based framework to analyze and evaluate participatory and evidence-based policy processes. Four network based performance indicators are derived by incorporating a network model of political belief formation into a political bargaining model of the Baron–Grossmann–Helpman type. The application of our approach to the CAADP reform in Malawi delivers the following results: (i) beyond incentive problems, i.e.
Local extension agents can benefit from the simple procedures in developing irrigation calendars for other irrigated crops. This study gives important lesson for local and regional decision makers, on their endeavour to increase the productivity of small scale irrigated agriculture. This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 describes the study area, practical irrigation schedule development method, alternative irrigation schedules and data collection and analysis methods. Section 3 presents the results.
This practitioner’s guide, a companion volume to The Innovation Paradox picks up where the previous report left off. It aims to help policy makers in developing countries better formulate innovation policies. It does so by providing a rigorous typology of innovation policy instruments, including evidence of impact—and more importantly, the critical conditions in terms of institutional capabilities to successfully implement these policy instruments in developing countries.
ICT-driven digital tools to support smallholder farmers are arguably inevitable for agricultural development, and they are gradually evolving with promising outlook. Yet, the development and delivery of these tools to target users are often fraught with non-trivial, and sometimes unanticipated, contextual realities that can make or mar their adoption and sustainability. This article unfolds the experiential learnings from a digital innovation project focusing on surveillance and control of a major banana disease in East Africa which is being piloted in Rwanda.
This Final report identifies best-fit practices, and makes recommendations on how to target women advisory service providers in capacity development programmes.
This article conceptualizes the diffusion of user innovations from a service ecosystem perspective. With the focus on sustainable innovations, the service ecosystem is evaluated, along with other systemic innovation concepts, as a possible theoretical basis for explaining the first adoption and diffusion of user innovations.
The Farmer Field School (FFS) approach has been very successful and witnessed a strong expansion in many areas beyond crop production. Notwithstanding this success, the adoption of FFS in national extension often remains problematic and FFS activities have often been implemented in the margin of national institutions with strong reliance on donor funding. The creation of an enabling environment for institutional support is essential for expanding the effort, improving quality, and strengthening impact and continuity of the FFSs.