USAID ISSUE BRIEF: LAND TENURE & CLIMATE-SMART AGRICULTURE

Projections indicate that agricultural production will need to increase by at least 60-70 percent by 2050 to meet demand, with climate change expected to significantly impact food production. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) may provide an environmentally sustainable strategy to meet these goals, focusing on sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and incomes, adapting and building resilience to climate change, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. CSA is based on three main pillars: sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and incomes, adapting and building resilience to climate change, and reducing and/or removing greenhouse gas emissions. However, small farmers have not widely adopted CSA due to key barriers, including a lack of access to inputs and materials, non-existent or unclear incentives and credits for providing environmental services, inadequate training and education, poor access to markets, limited research, and insecure land tenure and resource rights. As a result, the extent to which CSA benefits have been realized and rural development outcomes improved is limited. Secure land tenure means that people in a given environment recognize and respect the land rights of others over time. Land tenure and property rights (LTPR) institutions and rules create incentives that either encourage or discourage the adoption of CSA practices. The LTPR framework can affect a farmer's underlying incentives, especially where CSA investments are long-term in nature and are land-specific. In cases where relatively little upfront investment is needed, or where the investment is not parcel-specific, farmers may not need strong land tenure security to adopt the CSA practice. However, some CSA practices require significant upfront investments in machinery, labor, or capital, which are not movable and are tied to a specific parcel. The amount of time required before starting to realize benefits from any CSA practice, and how long these persist into the future, also affects the decision of whether or not to adopt that practice. Farmers may be less likely to adopt certain CSA practices if the set of rights they hold over land is insufficient to generate the incentives necessary or limits opportunities to directly benefit from their efforts. The composition of a farmer's land tenure and resource rights and how secure these are play a critical role in defining the stream of benefits that he or she can capture. When tenure is secure, rights holders are able to benefit from their investments - both labor and capital - in the land. If farmers are also able to securely transfer their land use rights or expected long-term benefits to another person or group, they are more likely to make larger investments. The level of tenure security varies widely from very secure to highly insecure, and the rights people hold may vary over time, impacting a farmer's willingness to adopt particular CSA practices.