A framework for priority-setting in climate smart agriculture research

Philip K. Thornton, Anthony Whitbread, Tobias Baedeker, Jill Cairns, Lieven Claessens, Walter Baethgen, Christian Bunn, Michael Friedmann, Ken E. Giller, Mario Herrero, Mark Howden, Kevin Kilcline, Vinay Nangia, Julian Ramirez-Villegas, Shalander Kumar, Paul C. West and Brian Keating

Agricultural Systems, 2018, vol. 167, issue C, 161-175

Abstract: Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is widely promoted as an approach for reorienting agricultural development under the realities of climate change. Prioritising research-for-development activities is crucial, given the need to utilise scarce resources as effectively as possible. However, no framework exists for assessing and comparing different CSA research investments. Several aspects make it challenging to prioritise CSA research, including its multi-dimensional nature (productivity, adaptation and mitigation), the uncertainty surrounding many climate impacts, and the scale and temporal dependencies that may affect the benefits and costs of CSA adoption. Here we propose a framework for prioritising agricultural research investments across scales and review different approaches to setting priorities among agricultural research projects. Many priority-setting case studies address the short- to medium-term and at relatively local scales. We suggest that a mix of actions that span spatial and temporal time scales is needed to be adaptive to a changing climate, address immediate problems and create enabling conditions for enduring change.

Keywords: Adaptation; Mitigation; Climate change; Agriculture; Research (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308521X18301288
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:agisys:v:167:y:2018:i:c:p:161-175

DOI: 10.1016/j.agsy.2018.09.009

Access Statistics for this article

Agricultural Systems is currently edited by J.W. Hansen, P.K. Thornton and P.B.M. Berentsen

More articles in Agricultural Systems from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().