A Short History of the Evolution of the Climate Smart Agriculture Approach and Its Links to Climate Change and Sustainable Agriculture Debates

To put CSA and its controversies in context, it is necessary to understand the evolution of global climate change policies over recent years. We use the framing of Gupta (2010), who traces the history of international climate change policy, from 1979 to 2010. He distinguishes between five phases of evolution. He refers to the pre-1990 phase as the period of framing the problem, beginning with the World Climate Conference in 1979 and including the establishment of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988. The main focus of global climate change policy during this period was the need for global action to stabilize greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, to be supported and guided by a globally cooperative framework for undertaking scientific research in the form of the IPCC, and with the understanding that developed and developing countries would bear different responsibilities to mitigate climate change. Because of the high uncertainty associated with climate change, a precautionary approach to climate change policy was adopted. This implies the need to take preventive action even before full certainty about human-induced climate change was obtained, and secondly, to emphasize no-regrets actions that would be valuable even in the absence of climate change. The publication of the Bruntland Commission Report on Sustainable Development in 1987 (WCED 1987) also led to the realization of the links between climate change and sustainable development and the benefits of considering them in an integrated fashion.

During the second period of international climate policy between 1991 and 1996, the initial articulation of a global policy framework was introduced, signified by the Rio Convention in 1992 and the adoption of Agenda 21. An important outcome of the Rio Conventions was the establishment of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which entered into force on 21 March 1994. The ultimate aim of the convention is preventing “dangerous” human interference with the climate system. Article 2 of the convention says this objective should achieved while ensuring that “food production is not threatened”. There was much debate on equity and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities.¹

Developed countries were assumed to bear much of the responsibility for both causing and reducing GHG emissions. However their response could also include helping developing countries pay for mitigation actions in the developing world. As the policy formation process moved forward, countries began to form coalitions around common interests. For example, small island nations formed one coalition, as did the G77, representing a block of 130 developing countries. Among the developed nations there was clear difference between the EU and the US and furthermore, the division grew between the EU and non-EU nations. Civil society organizations became a major player in the climate change debate with a major division between the northern organizations pursuing environmental and the southern organizations emphasizing development objectives.

The period between 1997 and 2001 saw the emergence of the first global agreement: the Kyoto Protocol. The Protocol emphasized comprehensive targets for GHG reduction in terms of CO2 equivalence rather than individual GHGs. Developed countries were assigned different GHG reduction targets and there was emphasis on flexibility in achieving these via mechanisms including emission trading, joint fulfillment and implementation (countries could form a bloc to share responsibilities to meet their joint targets). There was also recognition of the importance of financial mechanisms to promote the implementation of the agreements. The clean development mechanisms (CDM) was established, which allowed developed countries to use financial incentives to finance GHG emission reductions in developing countries and then use the credits to meet their own targets.

The establishment of the CDM provided a basis for expanding the use of payment for ecosystem services to meet GHG reduction targets. One important category of actions for emissions reductions highly relevant to agricultural development is that of sequestering carbon in soils and forestry. Many opportunities for agricultural related carbon sequestration were identified through improved soil management and forestry (McCarl and Schneider 2001). One of the challenges of implementing the Kyoto Protocol (KP) was the need for reliable and cost-effective mechanisms for carbon accounting, monitoring and validation which proved particularly difficult in the case of carbon sequestration. The issue of soil carbon inclusion was hotly debated in the discussions on establishing the CDM (Post et al. 2001; Ringius 2002).

The US, Canada, Brazil, and other countries advocated for the inclusion of soil carbon sequestration as part of the Protocol and developed mechanisms to improve its accounting (Paustian et al. 2004). Lal (2004) argued that payment for carbon sequestration could provide farmers, especially in developing countries, with significant supplementary income. However the EU and others were against its inclusion and ultimately the decision was taken to exclude this category from the international carbon offset markets.

Even more importantly, the global significance of the Kyoto Protocol suffered with the US withdrawl from it in 2001, since the two biggest carbon emitters (US and China) were not a part of it. Nevertheless, the Protocol provided a foundation for international collaboration and established many principles for future policy implementation.

The period between 2002 and 2007 saw a retreat from a global agreement to many bi- and multi-laterial agreements, many of which were initiated by the U.S. The period was characterized by competition for leadership among countries regarding climate change policy strategies. While the EU continued to push for extension and expansion of the Kyoto Protocol, the U.S. emphasized multi-lateral agreements. In particular, the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, signed in 2005 (and concluded, with many of its projects canceled, in 2011) emphasized the desire to introduce technological solutions to reduce greenhouse gases (GHG) through, for example, collaboration on R&D aiming towards ‘clean coal’ (Tan 2010).

The growing emphasis on government support to pursue alternative energy sources also had significant impact on agriculture, especially with the introduction of biofuel policies in much of the world (U.S., Brazil, EU and many other countries). While GHG reduction was one justification for the subsidization of biofuels, perhaps more important was the need to combat rising energy prices, to improve the balance of trade, and to increase the income of the agricultural sector (Zilberman et al. 2014). The increase in the price of food in 2008 as well as the concern about indirect land use led to the curtailment of biofuel policies, but some studies (Huang et al. 2012) found that biofuels can be beneficial for the poor, as long as mechanisms exist to protect vulnerable populations against extreme price shocks. Since national governments were not able to initiate potent global climate change actions during the period, subnational entities like U.S. states and Canadian provinces have established their own climate change programs. Both national and provincial plans have significantly impacted agriculture by introducing demand for biofuel and biomass as well as subsidizing carbon sequestration activities.

The final period of climate policy evolution considered by Gupta (2010) is the financial crisis period (from 2008 and on). In this time period the UNFCCC has moved away from a system where mitigation actions were solely the responsibility of rich countries, to one where mitigation actions in developing countries are now being articulated as part of national policy processes to meet the nation’s own mitigation aspirations. The policy and financing issues are significantly different in this context, compared with the situation when developing countries were only participating in greenhouse gas reductions on behalf of rich countries, in the form of a carbon offset.

The main issue on the international climate policy agenda for the UNFCCC COP 15 negotiation held in Copenhagen in 2009 was agreement on a global climate treaty which would lay out responsibilities for reducing emissions. Although COP 15 failed to achieve a global climate agreement, it did produce the “Copenhagen Accord” which called for developing countries to develop mitigation targets to 2020 and included financing commitments of $100 billion/year by 2020 as well as $30 billion for urgent actions up to 2012. In the following year at COP 16, the Green Climate Fund was established as an operating entity of the Financial Mechanism of the UNFCCC to support projects, programmes, policies and other activities in developing countries. Developing countries – including both emerging and least developed countries – have articulated mitigation actions through Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) (result of COP 18 2011), as well as more recently through their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs).

It is also important to note that during this period, CDM operations had expanded considerably, with new methodologies and accounting procedures accompanying the expansion. At the same time the volume and value in the voluntary (e.g. non-compliance) carbon offset markets, which generally does allow for the inclusion of agricultural soil carbon, also expanded rapidly, although still only representing a small percentage of the value of the trading in compliance markets (Hamrick and Goldstein 2016) Opposition to soil carbon credits in the context of developing country agriculture was raised by civil society actors. This opposition was based on the argument that soil carbon offsets were a means of putting the mitigation burden on low income developing country farmers and that farmers were unlikely to see any benefit from participating in such markets, but rather could be exposed to losing rights to their land (Action Aid 2011).

In the most recent period of climate policy development, there is a growing realization that significant impacts of climate change are already being felt, and are likely to continue and deepen. The Paris Agreement reached at the 21st Conference of Parties of the UNFCCC in 2015 signifies an increased global commitment to address climate change, as countries agreed to establish legally binding constraints on GHG emissions that aim to contain average global temperature rise by the use of a mixed market approach that induces both introduction of clean energy and conservation (Cooper 2016). All parties recognize the urgency of establishing adaptation strategies, especially to protect the poor and the vulnerable. As of 31 March 2016, 188 countries had submitted “Intended Nationally Determined Contributions” (INDCs) to the UNFCCC which includes statements of intended actions for mitigation as well as adaptation. More than 90% of the countries explicitly include agriculture in their mitigation and adaptation plans, with a particularly strong focus amongst least developed countries (LDCs) (FAO 2016). Adaptation in the agriculture sector is given high priority, and mitigation from agriculture, including sequestration is also quite prominent in the submissions. Thus the importance of considering adaptation and mitigation together and capturing the potential synergies between them is more important than ever. The potential of the CSA approach for supporting this is also increasingly recognized; 31 of the INDCs explicitly mention CSA in the context of seeking joint poverty reduction and environmental benefits (FAO 2016).

One of the main criticisms of the CSA approach has been that it prioritizes mitigation over food security and adaptation, and it mandates a link to carbon offset markets (Action Aid 2011, Neufeldt et al. 2013). By explicitly calling attention to the potential of agricultural transformation to generate mitigation benefits, and actively pursuing links to mitigation finance, the CSA approach raised suspicions that it was a means of pushing the mitigation burden on the world’s poorest people (Action Aid 2010). The argument was made that CSA advocated pushing carbon offsets for soil carbon sequestration on poor farmers, and this would shift the burden of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from rich, industrialized countries who had actually created the problem, to poor developing countries that already are facing the biggest burden in adapting to climate change. This argument is rooted in controversies over soil carbon sequestration and the role of developing countries in mitigation in the global climate policy debate (see previous section) as well as misconceptions of the framing of climate finance in CSA.

Before discussing misconceptions and policy debates, it is useful to understand the impetus for connecting mitigation finance to agricultural development. In 2008 the fourth assessment report of the IPCC was released. The report included a detailed analysis of the state of knowledge at the time on the technical and economic potential of mitigation from agriculture (Smith et al. 2008). They found an estimated global economic mitigation potential for 2030 from agriculture of 1500–1600, 2500–2700, and 4000–4300 MtCO2-eq/year at carbon prices of up to 20, 50 and 100 US$/tCO2-eq. The activities with highest economic potential were restoring cultivated organic soils, cropland management, grazing land management, restoration of degraded lands, rice management and livestock. Sequestration of carbon in agricultural soils is a key feature of most of these practices. Within each of these categories the actions analysed had high correspondence with actions promoted for sustainable agriculture, e.g. crop rotation, minimum tillage, nutrient use efficiency, feed efficiency. This analysis from the leading science body on climate change indicated the potential to capture huge synergies between mitigation and sustainable agricultural development.

At the same time, the rapid growth in the development of international carbon offset markets represented a major new and potentially huge source of finance to support sustainable agricultural activities with mitigation co-benefits. At the time of the launching of the CSA concept, the valuation of global carbon markets was $141 billion, composed principally of the clean development mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol and the European ETS system (World Bank 2011). However, as noted in the section on climate policy above, neither of these major financing mechanisms allowed soil carbon sequestration from agricultural practice change as a source of mitigation.

Outside of the formal carbon markets, an alternative voluntary market for carbon offsets was springing up, including projects sponsored by the World Bank Biocarbon Fund, NGOs in developed and developing countries, as well as some regional exchanges. The Chicago Climate Exchange which developed a protocol for soil carbon offsets from reduced tillage and improved pasture management (FAO 2012). However the financing flows through these voluntary markets was miniscule compared with those of the formal carbon markets (FAO 2012).

Essentially, there was very little demand for carbon offsets from soil carbon sequestration from developing country farmers due to their exclusion from the major carbon financing mechanisms. However the question of whether or not they should be allowed in order to open the doors to new financing that could generate both mitigation and development outcomes was an important thrust of early CSA work. If the barrier to accessing a significant new source of financing was simply a lack of good research on how much soil could be sequestered from changes in developing country farming systems, then surely the response should be developing a research agenda to provide the needed science. However as research into the potential of carbon offsets as a source of finance for developing country farmers proceeded, it became clear that issues of weak institutional capacity in developing countries was a more serious barrier. In particular, the rights of people with unclear and informal systems of land tenure to reap carbon benefits was very problematic Leach & Scoones 2015). Experience with payment for environmental service programs, and particularly the REDD+ process had indicated this was a particularly difficult issue to address, but very commonly found. The REDD+ experience indicated that there was indeed potential for poor farmers and land managers with insecure title to land to be dispossesed through the implementation of a REDD+ program, but that there was also potential for stimulating improvements in tenure systems through the impetus of such programs (Larson et al. 2013). Ultimately, it was well recognized that weak and inequitable institutions were a key barrier to making carbon finance work for small and poor farmers, and thus greater attention should be given to linking international public sources of finance such as the Global Environment Fund to support climate smart agriculture (FAO 2013 ). At the same time, major shifts in the international climate policy negotiations reduced the importance of international carbon offset markets as the main source of climate finance. The newly reconfigured international climate policy regime with its emphasis on nationally determined contributions to mitigation and adaptation and the prominence of agriculture in the contributions from developing countries has created interest in the capacity of agricultural mitigation sources to contribute to developing country’s own nationally determined contributions. It also implies a greater need for an approach that can identify how mitigation can be integrated into agricultural transformation strategies without compromising food security, which is of course a major focus of CSA.

To summarize, a major thrust of CSA is building the enabling conditions for a major transformation in agriculture, and developing adequate financing streams adapted to the specific conditions of agriculture is important in this regard. At the time of the launching of the CSA concept, the international carbon offset markets were the largest source of climate finance and thus much attention initially was given to its potential for supporting agricultural transformation in developing countries. Due to the problems with linking carbon finance to smallholder agriculture countries, together with the emergence of new funds for supporting mitigation actions on the part of developing countries in recent years, the emphasis of CSA has shifted away from carbon markets to international public climate finance such as the Green Climate Fund and the Global Environmental Facility. Given the high importance of agriculture in the national expressions of mitigation actions on the part of developing countries, the importance of identifying mitigation actions that are synergistic with food security and adaptation and building financing mechanisms to support them is of greater importance than ever.