Climate Smart Agriculture:

Climate change and agriculture have a high-strung relationship. Agricultural production is highly sensitive to the climate. Similarly, the climatic conditions of today are affected by different modes of agriculture. The many scales of this interaction pose existential threats to each other. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is one alternative way to continue this relationship. CSA is promoted at global scale by major actors, offering a triple-win solution -food security for the growing population while adapting to and mitigating the new conditions of the world climate. The CLG reading group will focus on CSA in November to discuss different approaches to this concept while engaging with scholarly debates around it.

 

Discussion questions:

(1) Is a concept such as CSA political or apolitical in nature?

(2) Which strategies (technological, political, financial etc) does the CSA concept comprise?

(3) To what extent, are these strategies influenced by global actors supporting it?

 

Suggested Readings:

• FAO Climate-smart agriculture Sourcebook 2nd edition (http://www.fao.org/3/a-i7994e.pdf) p. 1-2 and 7.
• Peter Newell & Olivia Taylor (2018) Contested landscapes: the global political economy of climate-smart agriculture, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 45:1, 108-129, DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2017.1324426

 

The KCL Climate Law & Governance Reading Group is a student-led initiative that aims to provide a forum for reflective and critical interdisciplinary discussion. Through monthly readings and group discussions, participants are invited to engage with topics that lie beyond, but are related to, their areas of expertise.