Is the adoption of any adaptation strategy a form of climate-smart agriculture?
In other words, are climate-smart agriculture practices the same adaptation strategies that we have been familiar with over the past years?
There is no difference: They are both distracting buzzphrases. In particular, regarding "climate smart", unless the aim is to differentiate climate-smart (or smart climates?) from climate-dumb (or dumb climates?), then “climate-smart” makes little sense. By definition, focusing on people to support agriculture supports needed food and livelihoods, including with respect to climate and climate change. In fact, focusing on the environment (through
climate) rather than on people contradicts knowledge of how to best understand agricultural needs and approaches--which often use different forms of technology, as and when needed. “Climate-smart” might be an attention-grabbing buzzword, but it takes sustainable development approaches down an ineffective pathway.
Meanwhile, climate change adaptation sits as a subset of disaster risk reduction and wider/deeper processes:
(a) https://doi.org/10.1108/DPM-02-2017-0043
(b) https://doi.org/10.1007/s13753-015-0046-5
(c) https://doi.org/10.1007/s13753-015-0038-5
(d) https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-016-2294-0
(e) https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Disaster-Risk-Reduction-Including-Climate-Change/Kelman-Mercer-Gaillard/p/book/9781138924567
(f) http://doi.org/10.17645/pag.v4i4.729
‘Climate smart agriculture’ (CSA) is an comprehensive approach or concept of sustainable agriculture which is described as a set of agricultural practices aimed at adapting to climate change, mitigating the impact of agriculture on climate whilst maintaining and increasing farm productivity.
There are three pillars of CSA as defined by FAO at the Hague Conference on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change (2010):
1. increasing agricultural productivity to support increased incomes, food security and development;
2. increasing adaptive capacity at multiple levels (from farm to nation);
3. decreasing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing carbon sinks.
To accomplish these objectives, one has to apply plethora of adaptation and mitigation strategies devised by various organizations indulged in R&D on climate change. Hence, CSA is an approach or concept whereas climate change adaptation strategies are execution plans to materialize this concept on ground encompassing the common aim of contributing to the development of agriculture and food security in a holistic and sustainable way.
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