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From Climate-Smart Agriculture to Climate-Smart Landscapes
Sara Scherr, Seth Shames, Rachel Friedman

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	Coordinating finance for climate-smart agriculture Seth Shames, Rachel Friedman, Tanja Havemann - August 2012 ‘Climate-smart agriculture’ is a term that has emerged since 2010 to describe agricultural systems designed to simultaneously improve food security and rural livelihoods and support climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts. Meeting the financing requirements for climate-smart agriculture implementation will be a significant challenge. Given overlapping and interrelated investments required to meet the multiple objectives of climate-smart agriculture the financing systems that support these objectives must be closely linked to maximize the efficiency of climate-smart investments and to manage the fragmentation of sectoral solutions. However, funds for climate adaptation, mitigation, agricultural development, and the closely related goals of food security and sustainable land management generally come from different sources. Without a coordination framework of these funds, there can be a tendency towards inefficiency and insufficient access to financing for climate-smart agriculture. This paper presents the findings and analysis of an inventory the scale and structure of flows of climate and agricultural finance in the developing world, with a particular focus on sub-Saharan Africa - a region of the world for which climate-smart agriculture will be especially critical to overall economic development and social welfare.
	Assessing the Ecological Impacts of Agricultural Eco-Certification and Standards: A Global Review of the Science and Practice EcoAgriculture Discussion Paper No. 8 Jeffrey C. Milder, Lee H. Gross, Alexandra M. Class - June 2012
	Performance and Potential of Conservation Agriculture for Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation in Sub-Saharan Africa Ecoagriculture Discussion Paper No. 6 Jeffrey C. Milder, Terhi Majanen, Sara J. Scherr - EcoAgriculture Partners - November 2011 Conservation agriculture (CA) is a farming approach that fosters natural ecological processes to increase agricultural yields and sustainability by minimizing soil disturbance, maintaining permanent soil cover, and diversifying crop rotations. CA has already been demonstrated to benefit large-scale and small-scale farmers in diverse contexts by increasing soil fertility, reducing input costs, saving labor and fuel, conserving water, preventing erosion, and increasing farm profitability. This Discussion Paper published by EcoAgriculture Partners with support from CARE and WWF-US examines how CA might also support climate change adaptation and mitigation in the context of smallholder agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa. It also defines and analyzes a broader approach to CA—including natural resource management and support for human and social capital at the farm, village, and landscape scales—that may increase synergies between food production, ecosystem services, and climate change adaptation. The study concludes by suggesting ways in which new policy priorities and climate finance sources may support the scaling-up of CA in appropriate contexts throughout sub-Saharan Africa, following the mainstreaming of CA that occurred in the Americas in prior decades.
	Integrating Agendas for Forests, Agriculture and Climate Change Mitigation: Rationale and Recommendations for Landscape Strategies, National Policy and International Climate Action Ecoagriculture Discussion Paper No. 7 Seth A. Shames, Sara J. Scherr, Courtney Wallace, Jeffrey Hatcher - EcoAgriculture Partners, Rights and Resources Initiative - November 2011
	Institutional Models for Carbon Finance to Mobilize Sustainable Agricultural Development in Africa Seth Shames, Sara J Scherr - EcoAgriculture Partners - December 2010 If there is a silver lining to the storm cloud of climate change for Africa’s small farmers, it is the potential for them to participate in international climate change mitigation markets that have emerged in recent years. With supportive policies and skillful project development, these markets have the potential to catalyze climate-friendly and resilient smallholder agricultural development in Africa. This project aimed to examine the ways that agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) markets are developing in Africa to support livelihoods of small farmers and the agroecosystems that they manage and to suggest ways to strengthen the institutions upon which these projects will be built in the future. Our definition of agriculture projects includes those in which farmers benefit from GHG mitigation markets. So, in addition to sequestration and emission reduction projects on working farm and pasture land, we have included forestry projects in which farmers are the primary “sellers” of credits. The project had three primary objectives. The first was to develop an inventory of agricultural GHG mitigation projects in sub-Saharan Africa. The analysis of the inventory includes a basic characterization of the elements of project design, with special attention to their institutional arrangements.
	Agriculture and the Convention on Biological Diversity Guidelines for Applying the Ecosystem Approach Seth Shames, Sara J. Scherr - Ecoagriculture Partners - June 2009 The 9th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to review the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in May 2008 presented a unique opportunity to bring attention to the importance of integrating agricultural issues more fully into the CBD, as well as more broadly within the biodiversity conservation discourse. In 2007 and 2008, Ecoagriculture Partners engaged collaborators to convene an informal working group to raise the profile of, and support for, strategies to implement the CBD’s Ecosystem Approach within an agricultural context. This group included Sara Scherr, Seth Shames, Claire Rhodes and Jenny Nelson of Ecoagriculture Partners; Toby Hodgkin of Bioversity International; Jeff McNeely of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN); Elspeth Halverson of the United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP) Equator Initiative; Nora Ourabah Haddad of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP); Delia Catacutan of Landcare International; Victor Archaga of The Nature Conservancy; Mohamed Bakarr of the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) (now at Conservation International); Marieta Sakhalan of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP); Anelissa Grigg of Fauna and Flora International; Benson Venegas of Asociación ANAI, Costa Rica; David Kuria of the Kijabe Environment Volunteers (KENVO), Kenya; Donato Bumacas of the Kalinga Mission, Philippines (KAMICYDI); and Arturo Massol-Deya of Casa Pueblo, Puerto Rico. One of the outputs of this process was a policy brief called Applying the Ecosystem Approach to Biodiversity Conservation in Agricultural Landscapes. The goal of this brief was to provide clear guidelines and real-world examples to aid Parties in their attempts to implement the program of work on agricultural biodiversity. Elements of this brief have been incorporated into section 4. Our participation in the writing of this brief and in the discussions it sparked among CBD stakeholders made clear to us that there is a significant demand within CBD policy circles to explore these policy guidelines in greater depth and place them within a broader political and conceptual context. This paper is an attempt to do that. Seth Shames and Sara J. Scherr, Ecoagriculture Partners
	New Directions for Integrating Environment and Development in East Africa Key findings from consultations with stakeholders in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda Steve Bass, Sara J. Scherr, Yves Renard, Seth Shames - IIED, Ecoagriculture Partners - February 2009 This paper synthesizes the findings of a study carried out by Ecoagriculture Partners and the International Institute for Environment and Development on behalf of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to explore opportunities for sustainable development in East Africa. It is based on a survey of nearly 200 leaders in environment and development in Ethiopia., Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, as well as international experts, and uses their views and recommendations as a foundation to suggest priorities for action towards sustainable development in East Africa.
	Understanding Ecoagriculture: A Framework for Measuring Landscape Performance Ecoagriculture Discussion Paper #2 Louise E. Buck, Jeffrey C. Milder, Thomas A. Gavin, Ishani Mukherjee - March 2007 Ecoagriculture is already being practiced in hundreds of locations worldwide, with promising results for regions where biodiversity conservation, food production, and poverty alleviation are all high priorities. In particular, given that protected areas alone are often inadequate to conserve unique species and ecosystems, ecoagriculture is a promising approach for accommodating significant biodiversity in the inhabited parts of biodiverse regions. Yet our understanding of ecoagricultural systems and our ability to improve them, replicate them, and scale them up is hindered by the lack of a comprehensive framework for measuring and monitoring the performance of ecoagriculture landscapes over time. The goal of this paper, therefore, is to propose such a framework and discuss how it may be implemented in diverse landscapes worldwide. Over the past year and a half, many people have contributed to a dialogue about how best to measure the performance of ecoagriculture landscapes. The culmination of this dialogue, which has occurred through interviews, literature reviews, two workshops, and a graduate seminar at Cornell University, is the framework proposed in this discussion paper. The framework provides an approach to measuring the performance of entire landscapes with respect to the goals of ecoagriculture. The purpose is not to determine whether a given landscape has attained some desirable end condition, but whether it is moving in the right direction—that is, whether the management practices and resulting mosaic of land uses across the landscape are yielding progress toward the goals, individually and collectively. Locally, stakeholders who have interests in the performance of a particular landscape can set targets for meeting specific goals.
	Ecoagriculture: A Review and Assessment of Its Foundations Ecoagriculture Discussion Paper #1 Louise E. Buck, Thomas A. Gavin, David R. Lee, Norman T. Uphoff - December 2006 Continued population growth and urban expansion are reducing the availability per capita of land for agricultural purposes. Growing water scarcity is threatening agricultural production and creating challenges for farmers. As the severity of these problems increases, the world continues to demand that agriculture: • feed the growing global population and reduce hunger; • generate sustainable incomes and livelihoods; • contribute to export growth strategies; • reduce poverty; and • support economic and social equity. These demands highlight the need for more productive agricultural production systems; however, there is growing concern that current systems are not sustainable and may be contributing to the degradation of ecosystems that are important to humans and other species. Out of this concern comes a new approach to farming that combines sustainable agriculture with the protection of ecosystems and biodiversity. This approach, called ecoagriculture, promotes sustainable solutions to global malnutrition and hunger while protecting and enhancing the natural resources used in food production and wildlife conservation. On the surface, such a theory provides a comprehensive solution to several serious issues; however, many researchers have questioned the scientific validity of ecoagriculture and its feasibility as a sustainable development strategy. In response to these questions, the authors have prepared this review paper. In analyzing the available research and compiling this assessment, researchers focused on two main questions: 1. Is there a scientific basis for the concept of ecoagriculture? 2. If so, how can the concept be implemented successfully? Research into the validity of ecoagriculture was done by three groups of experts: the Ecoagriculture Assessment Team (EAT), consisting of four Cornell faculty members and four research assistants; the Ecoagriculture Assessment Advisors (EAA), consisting of nine researchers and practitioners; and the Ecoagriculture Working Group (EWG), consisting of 27 Cornell faculty members and two graduate students.

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