The paper explores the implications of rural livelihood diversity for agricultural innovation policies. It summarises literature on the nature of rural poverty, with particular emphasis on the relative roles of farm and non-farm income. It also reviews the various roles, direct and indirect, that agricultural innovation can play in rural poverty reduction. Finally, it uses an agricultural knowledge and information systems (AKIS) perspective to argue for a differentiated approach to targeting agricultural innovations, based on an analysis of rural assets.
This paper explores the use of actor-oriented approaches in natural resource-based development. It begins by reviewing the need to bring an analysis of actor linkages, coalitions and information flows higher on the agenda in planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. Various tools which could assist in doing this are introduced and their use is illustrated in case studies of natural resource-based research and development (R&D) projects in Nepal and Bangladesh.
Dans le besoin urgent de lutter contre le changement climatique, une priorité essentielle est de renforcer la capacité de ces groupes et communautés les plus vulnérables, et déjà fortement affectés, à améliorer leur capacité à adapter leurs systèmes de subsistance.
Presented at the ‘Building Livelihoods Resilience in a Changing Climate’ conference, Kuala Lumpur, 3-5th March 2011, this paper focuses on the Local Adaptive Capacity framework (LAC), developed under the Africa Climate Change Alliance Project (ACCRA), as an innovative initiative that attempts to move towards a better understanding of its core features through isolating five characteristics of adaptive capacity. Demonstrated through findings from field research across three African countries (Ethiopia, Mozambique and Uganda), this paper argues that frameworks for understanding and supporting
This report describes the work carried out by Institute of International Agriculture (IITA) and Olam in the Mt. Elgon region in Uganda to develop climate-smart agricultural (CSA) practices to help farmers to manage the specific effects of weather variability/climate change to that region and lay them out in a “Stepwise” pathway tailored to specific farmer segments to help them make smarter and more timely investment in resilience building practices.
This report is concerned with the ‘who?’ ‘what?’ and ‘how?’ of pro-poor extension. It builds on the analytical framework proposed in the Inception Report of the same study (Christoplos, Farrington and Kidd, 2001), taking it forward by fleshing out the analysis with empirical information gathered from several countries during the course of the study (from primary data in Bolivia, Colombia, Nicaragua, Uganda and Vietnam, and from secondary sources in a range of other countries, including India), and drawing conclusions on the scope for action by governments and donors in a range of contexts.
The aim of this report is to provide a detailed review of documented social learning processes for climate changeand natural resource managementas described in peer-reviewed literature. Particular focus is on identifying (1) lessons and principles, (2) tools and approaches, (3) evaluation of social learning, as well as (4) concrete examples of impacts that social learning has contributed to.
Conference proceedings of a 3-day workshop on Communicating Carbon, organized and hosted by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security (CCAFS), which brought together field practitioners from carbon projects to exchange lessons learned and to develop improved skills related to communication about carbon projects.The workshop has highlighted best communication practices used to inform farmers about carbon markets, contracts, and risks involved in engaging with carbon projects.
This paper introduces the Multilevel Stakeholder Influence Mapping (MSIM) tool, which aims to assist analysts in the study of power dynamics across levels within climate adaptation regimes. The tool is adapted from the Stakeholder Influence-Mapping tool (2005) of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). MSIM is a simple visual tool to examine and display the relative power/influence that different individuals and groups have over a focal issue—in this case, climate change adaptation of smallholder farmers.
The working paper presents a new toolkit for the implementation of a participatory vulnerability assessment (PVA) in rural localities, by introducing the methodology, as well as the findings, from a pilot study in Sokoine (Zepisa, Hombolo Ward) in Tanzania. It is based on a participatory methodological approach and follows a multidimensional conceptualisation of social vulnerability to climate change.