Towards developing scalable climate-smart village models: approach and lessons learnt from pilot research in West Africa
This report (PDF) by the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) and CCAFS-CGIAR provides lessons learned on a project on “Developing community-based climate smart agriculture through participatory action research in CCAFS benchmark sites in West Africa”. After three years of implementation, the document is describing the approach used and the lessons learnt. The project used participatory action research approach to test combinations of innovations to address the triple goal of climate smart agriculture which are adaptation to climate change, mitigation of the effects of climate change and attaining food security. An evaluation of the project through two consultants reported that the project was well designed and was very relevant in the context of climate change as its objectives are in line with local needs especially national research/ development goals. From their assessment, the most promising and sustainable outputs were found to be the individual, low cost and locallygrounded technologies/innovations. In addition, farmers demanded soil and water conservation techniques, agroforestry practices (e.g.,Farmer-managed Natural Regeneration, fodder banks and fruit tree planting) and crop diversification (leafy vegetables). The main weaknesses of the project according to the consultants include lack of systematic baseline and actions about assessing greenhouse gas as indicated in the project document. Based on these weaknesses and achievements, recommendations for future actions have been formulated to be used to adjust the activities, particularly for the second phase.