Climate-Smart Agriculture: Enhancing Resilient Agricultural Systems, Landscapes, and Livelihoods in Ethiopia and Beyond

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the majority of the population depends on subsistence farming in a system characterized by high forest landscape degradation, low soil fertility, erratic rainfall, small farm sizes, and a high population. Over 936.1 million people live in this region, and over 60% of the population depends on farming, according to 2015 data from the World Bank. To meet the increasing food demand (both in quantity and quality) of the increasing population, the agricultural practices in the region have been expanding to forests and biodiversity hotspot areas. At the same time, climate change is posing severe challenges resulting in low agricultural production and low resilience capacities of smallholder communities in this region. To address the challenges, evidence-based and eco-friendly technologies and approaches are crucial for improving food security and livelihoods in the region. Enhancing the production of food on less land in more sustainable ways will improve the capacities of smallholder communities to cope with climate shocks and improve the resiliency of communities and ecosystems. Integrated and climate-smart approaches, for example, on land, water and forest management practices can sustainably increase agricultural productivity, and ecosystem and societal resilience while reducing greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions for enhancing to achieve national, regional, and global developments including food security and livelihoods improvement.With the aim of compiling climate-smart technologies and practices which combine both food security and climate change issues, the World Agroforestry (ICRAF) in Ethiopia took an initiative to prepare a book with information organized based on scientific knowledge and case studies gathered from different parts of Ethiopia and other Sub-Saharan Africa countries. To this end, ICRAF invited professionals from several institutions and organizations to document and exchange all available evidence based knowledge and local agro-ecological practices with contributions from a range of topics including agriculture, water management, agroforests, soil, ecosystems, climate change, rural energy, socioeconomic, gender and policy issues in Sub-Saharan Africa, with emphasis on Ethiopia.The book presents evidence-based knowledge and scalable practices which can be tailored to different biophysical, socioeconomic, policy, and institutional contexts. The technologies and practices described in this book include promising options by considering varying contexts and demands, which can potentially enhance accelerated restoration of degraded landscapes, sustainable agricultural production and foodnutrition-energy security while contributing to resilient ecosystems and societies to climate change. The book also provides frameworks and strategies, which improve informed decision-making and facilitate accelerated adoption and scaling up of the technologies and practices in Ethiopia and the SSA. The book highlights approaches, which are timely and critical towards achieving national and regional development strategies in SSA, while contributing to global initiatives, such as Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and Forest Landscape Restoration. The important information of the book can be used by different users, such as researchers, extension staff, local communities, practitioners, academics, and policy makers.

---

• View source