What impact do infrastructure improvements, such as climate-resilient housing, water management systems, and renewable energy, have on reducing the vulnerability of marginalized communities?
Short answer
Key finding
This study addresses the sub-question of how infrastructure improvement through climate-resilient housing, water management systems, and renewable energy will help reduce the vulnerability of the marginalized communities by exploring the overall role of climate-smart agriculture in smallholder farming. While the review mainly focuses on agricultural practices, it highlights how improved access to infrastructure—such as water management systems and financial mechanisms—can help overcome barriers to adoption and enhance resilience. The study underscores that financial access, better inputs, education, and gender-sensitive policies are crucial to overcoming constraints faced by marginalized groups, particularly women. By addressing these constraints, improvements to infrastructure and practice of CSA would significantly decrease the vulnerability of rural communities with weaker adaptive capacities while enhancing the prospects for more sustainability and resilience within these areas vis-à-vis climate change.
Crop rotation, agroforestry, and improved water management as CSA (Climate Smart Agriculture) practices increase productivity, income, and environmental sustainability for smallholder farmers, but adoption rates are constrained by financial constraints, lack of access to inputs, and gender inequalities.
Short summary
CSA can benefit small-scale farmers in terms of increasing yields, income, and environmental performance. But adoption is often limited due to financial, informational, and gender-related barriers. Access to finance, education, and extension services, social networks, and cooperatives can increase adoption rates. There is a need for targeted policies and structural interventions for addressing such challenges and empowering marginalized groups.
Long answer
Long summary
What is this summary about?
This summary is concerning the effectiveness of climate-smart agriculture as an intervention to help vulnerable communities and particularly smallholder farmers adapt to climate change. It talks more about barriers to adoption and the role of policies and support systems in overcoming these.
What evidence is this summary based on?
This summary is based on one systematic review:
Mizik, T. (2021). Climate-smart agriculture on small-scale farms: A systematic literature review. Agronomy, 11(6), 1096.https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4395/11/6/1096
What are the main findings?
This summary explores the subquestion related to improved infrastructure, through climate-resilient housing and water management as well as sources of renewable energy, and diminishing vulnerability of socially and economically poorer sections of a population to change. Although the focus in this review centers on climate-smart agriculture (CSA), it gives some views on how an improvement in such infrastructure, with better access by smallholder farmers, especially women, to financial systems, to agricultural inputs and information, improves their adaptability to climate. The study calls for targeted policies, support systems, and gender-sensitive interventions that will overcome the barriers to adoption in much the same way that infrastructure-related interventions will help reduce vulnerabilities in marginalized communities.
The review reveals that the major merit of CSA can be its use not only for enhancing agricultural production but also resource optimization to favor environmental sustainability. Nevertheless, quite a few constraints face wider uptake of the approach, specifically by smallholders in rural environments. The challenges take several forms ranging from restricted sources of finances for operations to some key agricultural inputs that are relatively inaccessible to these populations. Furthermore, limited access to information also ranks as one such hindrance that constrains larger adoption.
Beyond these general issues, gender-specific challenges greatly hamper the uptake of CSA among female farmers. For example, unequal access to land, credit, and knowledge of agriculture generally limit women's capacity to engage and benefit fully from CSA. Addressing the issue of gender inequalities would make CSA a truly inclusive initiative that supports women who, in many areas, play the most central role in farming to engage and benefit from climate-resilient agricultural systems.
The perceived cost and risk associated with implementing CSA is another major barrier. Most farmers, especially those who are dependent on traditional farming, are reluctant to adopt new practices because they fear that it will be too expensive to begin with and the risk of straying from familiar farming practices is too high. The problem is compounded by the fact that labor-saving technologies or practices that would help in the adoption of CSA are not easily accessible to most small-scale farmers who rely on manual labor for their agricultural activities.
This involves improvement of financial systems in support of agriculture, availability of inputs to agriculture, improvement in information and education among farmers, targeting women and other disadvantaged groups, policies, and programs that strengthen the capacity of women by affording them the same opportunities to land, credit, and training in the adoption of CSA. Overall, the research findings suggest a combination of enhanced financial support, better access to inputs, better education, and targeted gender-sensitive policies is key to overcoming these barriers to adoption of CSA. Such efforts will therefore be key in enhancing the resilience of small-scale farmers and constructing a more inclusive and sustainable agriculture system capable of adapting to climate change.
Review summaries
Climate-Smart Agriculture on Small-Scale Farms: A Systematic Literature Review
Review
Geography
Year
Citation
Full text URL
Number of included studies
Review type
Critical appraisal of included studies
Assessment review
1. Key finding
Overall
The review examines Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) practices on small-scale farms, focusing on the factors that shape adoption, including economic and environmental benefits. It emphasizes the value of policies tailored to specific contexts, financial access, and knowledge transfer in enhancing CSA adoption for increased productivity and resilience.
2. Short summary
The review tries to understand how small-scale farms embrace Climate-Smart Agriculture practices to enhance productivity, resilience, and environmental performance. According to it, the adoption of CSA is driven by both economic benefits, access to resources, and adequate policies tailored to local needs. The results suggest that the efficiency of CSA strategy thrives when coupled with knowledge transfer, access to financial incentives, and secure tenure.
3. Long summary
3.1 PICOS
Population: Small-scale farmers in developing countries involved in agriculture.
Intervention: Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices.
Outcomes: Increased productivity, resilience, GHG reduction, income stability, factors influencing CSA adoption, economic feasibility, and simpler, low-labor methods.
Study design: Systematic literature review of 30 selected articles.
3.2 Risk of bias Not assessed
3.3 Publication bias Not assessed
3.4 Findings
Adoption of CSA practices by small-scale farmers, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and other developing regions, results in increased productivity, higher incomes, and enhanced environmental performance. With the highest number of farms being small-scale, small steps to adopt CSA can lead to significant global impacts. However, there is considerable heterogeneity in smallholder farming systems, requiring site-specific approaches even for similar regions. This diversity should be reflected in policies and encourage combined adoption of various CSA strategies for optimal effects.
Key CSA practices cited in the literature include crop rotation, agroforestry, improved water management, intercropping, and drought-tolerant varieties. However, adoption of CSA varies highly and is affected by financial constraints, availability of inputs (seeds, fertilizers), information, land tenure security, and access to extension. Most forms of CSA adoptability are highly determined by economic factors, like payback periods and labor intensities, which often favor smallholders with low-cost and low-labor CSA practices.
Studies emphasize the fact that adoption of CSA may be thwarted by barriers such as high initial costs, lack of financial resources, limited access to information, and gender inequalities. Barriers such as limited access to information might be more important in rural areas, particularly for women. Improving access to finance, education, and extension services will be very useful in dealing with these barriers. Sometimes off-farm income or financial support can be equally important in adopting CSA, while cooperatives and social networks act as facilitators for knowledge transfer and resource pooling.
While CSA comes with multiple benefits both for economic and environmental sustainability, it does require local conditions, targeted support, and structural barriers mitigating participation of smallholder farmers.
3.5 Sensitivity analysis Not assessed
4. AMSTAR 2 assessment of the review
| 1. | Did the the review state clearly the components of PICOS (or appropriate equivalent)? | Yes | |
| 2. | Did the report of the review contain an explicit statement that the review methods were established prior to the conduct of the review and did the report justify any significant deviations from the protocol? (i.e. was there a protocol) | Yes | |
| 3. | Did the review authors use a comprehensive literature search strategy? | Yes | |
| 4. | Did the review authors perform study selection in duplicate? | Yes | |
| 5. | Did the review authors perform data extraction in duplicate? | Yes | |
| 6. | Did the review authors provide a list of excluded studies and justify the exclusions? | Yes | |
| 7. | Did the review authors describe the included studies in adequate detail? (Yes if table of included studies, partially if other descriptive overview) | Yes | |
| 8. | Did the review authors use a satisfactory technique for assessing the risk of bias (RoB) in individual studies that were included in the review? | Yes | |
| 9. | Did the review authors report on the sources of funding for the studies included in the review? | Yes | |
| 10. | If meta-analysis was performed did the review authors use appropriate methods for statistical combination of results? | Yes | |
| 11. | Did the review authors provide a satisfactory explanation for, and discussion of, any heterogeneity observed in the results of the review? | Yes | |
| 12. | If they performed quantitative synthesis did the review authors carry out an adequate investigation of publication bias (small study bias) and discuss its likely impact on the results of the review? | Yes | |
| 13. | Did the review authors report any potential sources of conflict of interest, including any funding they received for conducting the review? | Yes | |
| Overall (lowest rating on any critical item) | High |
5. Count of references to the following words
| Sex | 0 |
| Gender | 6 |
| Women | 5 |
| Intra-household | 0 |