The 4th Global Science Conference on Climate Smart Agriculture will be held in Johannesburg on November 28-30 and focuses on “Catalysing local innovations and action to accelerate scaling up of CSA”. 

Background information

Every day that passes, we are learning and getting more convinced on the inevitability of ensuring our agricultural systems are climate smart. Climate-smart agriculture is the reform to ensure the way agriculture is practiced remains compatible with man-made climate changes, securing short-and-long-term resilience in productive capacity of the agricultural systems. We need growing scientifically supported field evidence that embracing and practicing locally adapted climate smart agriculture is cardinal in meeting the minimum requirements for productive and environmentally stable agricultural systems.  Such science is essential in sustaining capacity to provide for food and industrial needs as well as incomes for the local populations. Practicing CSA will directly impact on three interrelated aspects, namely:

• Sustainably increase agricultural productivity and incomes in order to meet national food security and development goals
• Build resilience and the capacity of agricultural and food systems to adapt to climate change;
• Ensure that agriculture contributes to mitigate emissions of greenhouse gases or increase carbon sequestration.

These three conditions (food security, adaptation and mitigation) are referred to as the “triple win” of climate-smart agriculture.

You can find more information on the Conference at the website.