Page 45 - FAO-IPCC Expert meeting on climate change

Adaptation and resilience in food and land-based ecosystems
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Remedial actions to restore land degradation in the rangelands are quite varied. If the system remains fairly resilient, short-term protection measures (e.g. land scarification of the surface and water harvesting) may be beneficial and improve filtration. One option is to rehabilitate more severely degraded land but this is costly; another is to reallocate and change plant species within the system. A further option that has proved successful is to introduce new plants (e.g. cactus) that are more adaptable and resilient under harsher and drier conditions. Restoration also includes protection measures, such as building fences around rangelands and allowing them to re-establish. Such measures should be carefully designed to include social and land-use rights considerations.
Water harvesting techniques are critical in the restoration of rangelands and for improving land productivity. Water infiltration can be improved by simple methods such as scarifying the surface of land that captures rain water in dry lands and improves plant establishment. Various alternatives are available to create water harvesting structures, some of which are traditional techniques. Conservation has been surprisingly successful in dry land areas, generating significant and consistent yield increases over time as a consequence of improved water preservation. Such efforts in Central Asia have doubled crop production.
The need to combine bottom-up with top-down approaches while working from the middle, where real world challenges can be fully addressed, is evident. Furthermore, the variety of technical and economic responses (i.e. inter-disciplinary) should be integral. While there is no shortage of technical solutions, the most difficult undertaking is the uptake by farmers, which will call for recognition of socio-economic factors. Participatory approaches and inclusive decision-making is key to identifying and implementing win-win solutions for multiple stakeholders with divergent views. When scaling up successful pilot programmes, such as the introduction of new adaptable breeds, the joint participation of civil society and the private/industry sector is critical. Neither is able to respond to such challenges fully or sustainably on its own.
Innovative approaches and frameworks are essential to scale up pilot initiatives and combine land restoration with new economic and job opportunities for youth, especially in developing countries. For this to occur, a judicious combination of government policies and regulations, improved governance (i.e. multi-stakeholder participation in decision-making) and appropriate market instruments (i.e. incentives and disincentives) to effect change are indispensable. For the scientific community, this calls for improved dialogue across disciplines (i.e. between economists and ecologists) and the rapprochement of perspectives between environmental and agricultural economists, each of whom continue to work in isolation from each other.
4.5 Agricultural intensification, diversification and other practices
Sustainable intensification is defined as an increase in food production on existing farmland in ways that do not harm the environment while securing continued food production into the future. Examples of sustainable intensification include crop-livestock integration, conservation agriculture, intercropping systems, agroforestry and ways to improve water harvesting. Many sustainable intensification practices improve productivity and resource use efficiency and reduce yield variability, at least under current climate conditions. It is evident that the increase in productivity is substantial within an experimental setting, although its success largely hinges on available resources such as land, livestock, organic resources, crop residue and especially labour.
In sub-Saharan Africa, large household datasets indicate that the variables most associated with the uptake by
farmers of intensification are farm (land), livestock and family size (labour). The same study showed that by doubling productivity, the most food-insecure households with limited resources are still less likely to respond proportionally. For mixed crop-livestock systems, a more efficient approach to raise the food security for poor households would be by way of off-farm incomes. For such poor households, only 2−7 percent will be relieved of food insecurity with a 50 percent increase in cereal yield.
In Africa, the gross margins for most small farmers decrease with the projected yield decline of major crops. In one particular study maize yield drops by 30 percent (to take the average climate crop yield impacts reported for Africa in the literature) under climate change40 and predicted changes in market prices in the absence of adaptation are also taken into the equation. Were farmers to adapt and intensify, however, they may be able to compensate for the decline
See Mark Van Wijk, Appendix 2
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FAO-IPCC Expert meeting on climate change, land use and food security