The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation and the European Commission have today announced a new €5.3 million project aimed at helping Malawi, Vietnam and Zambia transition to a "climate-smart" approach to agriculture.

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The "Climate-smart agriculture" that will be promoted by the joint initiative will seek to position the agricultural sector as a solution to the major challenges of climate change and food security. The groups aim to improve the productivity of food systems, whilst making them more resilient to climate change and increasing their potential to capture and sequester carbon.

Such measures have long been advocated by groups including the FAO, and featured prominently in a number of influential scientific reports on agriculture in recent years, including the 2008 IAASTD report and the recent Foresight report, commissioned by the UK government.

Commenting on the new project, FAO Assistant Director-General for the Economic and Social Development Department, Hafez Ghanem, said, "We need to start putting climate-smart agriculture into practice, working closely with farmers and their communities. But there are no one-size-fits-all solutions — better climate-smart farming practices need to respond to different local conditions, to geography, weather and the natural resource base."

Ghanem said it is imperative to act now to ensure people who depend on agriculture for their livelihood are able to withstand the effects of climate change, even as negotiations over a global climate change agreement are ongoing. He went on to expressed his hopes for the long-term impact of the project, "While not all solutions identified will be universally applicable, we can learn a lot about how countries could take similar steps and begin shifting to this approach to agriculture."

The FAO director’s sentiments were echoed by Professor Bob Watson, Defra chief scientist, who, speaking at this year’s Oxford Farming Conference, criticised governments for their “total inaction” over the threat of climate change and recommended moves be made without delay to implement agroecological systems, which could support farmers, whilst reducing their impact on the environment.

The two organisations said they hope their initiative will find ways of creating new climate smart practices and expanding on existing ones, and would lead to a shift in government policy in the partner countries towards linking environmentally sensitive agricultural practices with government climate change policy.

The groups will be working with government as well as local and international organizations over three years to implement new systems. They have hopes this pioneering approach could result in investment in innovative new systems, to the long term benefit of the farmers involved. The FAO, which will take the overall lead on the project, will be working in partnership governmental and research institutions, as well as global organizations such as the Global Crop Diversity Trust.

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