Climate change imposes a dynamic challenge on the food system in Asia and has already started adversely impacting farming and food value chains in ADB’s DMCs. Climate change adaptation and mitigation investments, hence, are relevant to the food and nutrition security agenda of Asia and the Pacific, and ADB has set a steep target of $ 1 billion to increase climate finance (adaptation) in Agriculture and Natural Resources Sector by 2020.

Climate change impacts food production and distribution systems, and broad concepts of adaptation and mitigation measures have been well discussed and widely understood in general. What is lacking, though, is the practical knowledge on (i) how to apply climate-smart agriculture (CSA) approach to specific investment projects by integrating required climate change adaptation measures and investing in mitigation opportunities within the project scope, and (ii) various ways to finance such CSA investment approach.

Based on relevant global best practices, this course introduced various CSA application cases for different types of sector investment projects and tools to help plan CSA investments for ADB projects. The CSA cases were developed for watershed and irrigation improvement; livestock value chain development, soil improvement, and landscape management; aquaculture and coastal management improvement; and agribusiness value chain development. Participating project teams learned various best CSA practices that are integrated into sector investment projects and practice their applications to the design of their own pipeline projects.

Learning Objectives

After attending the training program, the participants were expected to:

1. define climate-smart agriculture, and identify priority adaptation and mitigation actions;
2. describe methodologies and tools to plan CSA investments; and
3. characterize good CSA practices relevant to ADB pipeline from relevant case studies, including climate-smart livestock/ fisheries/agricultural value chains, watershed and irrigation management, and others.