Suchergebnisse

In 2014, Nigeria's Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) proposed a major expansion of agricultural insurance in the context of other reforms to the agricultural sector, and as part of the implementation of its National Agricultural Resilience Framework (NARF). This report is designed to inform development of inclusive insurance for Nigeria's agriculture sector, and is offered as a contribution to the NARF. It is an outcome of a consultative process that began in September 2014 between FMARD and the CGIAR research program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). By overcoming the problems of moral hazard, adverse selection, and resulting high transaction costs and processing delays that have plagued indemnity-based agricultural insurance, index-based insurance makes it feasible to insure millions of smallholder farmers. Well-designed index insurance can achieve specific risk objectives such as protecting farmers' livelihoods in the face of major climate shocks, and promoting farmers' livelihoods by overcoming barriers to adoption of improved agricultural technologies and practices, and access to market opportunities. Reviews of index-based agricultural insurance initiatives have identified several success factors that are relevant to the situation in Nigeria. First, successful initiatives have been designed to unlock particular opportunities for farmers that were previously constrained by particular risks. Second, initiatives are most successful when they are driven by demand and responsive to farmer input. Third, successful initiatives have invested in the capacity of a range of local stakeholders. Fourth, investments in data systems, and in science-based index development, have helped address the challenges of data poverty and basis risk. Fifth, successful index insurance requires an enabling regulatory environment. Finally, successful initiatives involve multi-stakeholder partnerships, and often public-private partnerships. A strategy for expanding insurance for Nigeria's smallholder farmers must address challenges that include: limited and asymmetric information; crowding out by post-disaster relief efforts; limited access to reinsurance markets; lack of insurance culture; and inadequate regulatory environments. The development of effective market-based agricultural insurance, requires government support in five key areas: data systems; awareness and capacity building; facilitating international risk pooling; "smart" subsidies; and an enabling policy environment. Three immediate priorities are identified: (a) creating a regulatory environment that makes it attractive for insurance companies to enter the market; (b) developing a public-private partnership that incentivizes and supports companies to develop innovative products and services for the agriculture sector; and (c) progressively expand implementation through well-designed pilots, evaluation and learning processes. The organizations that have been involved or consulted in the process leading to this report offer relevant expertise.

Agriculture is considered to be "climate-smart" when it contributes to increasing food security, adaptation and mitigation in a sustainable way. This new concept now dominates current discussions in agricultural development because of its capacity to unite the agendas of the agriculture, development and climate change communities under one brand. In this opinion piece authored by scientists from a variety of international agricultural and climate research communities, we argue that the concept needs to be evaluated critically because the relationship between the three dimensions is poorly understood, such that practically any improved agricultural practice can be considered climate-smart. This lack of clarity may have contributed to the broad appeal of the concept. From the understanding that we must hold ourselves accountable to demonstrably better meet human needs in the short and long term within foreseeable local and planetary limits, we develop a conceptualization of climate-smart agriculture as agriculture that can be shown to bring us closer to safe operating spaces for agricultural and food systems across spatial and temporal scales. Improvements in the management of agricultural systems that bring us significantly closer to safe operating spaces will require transformations in governance and use of our natural resources, underpinned by enabling political, social and economic conditions beyond incremental changes. Establishing scientifically credible indicators and metrics of long-term safe operating spaces in the context of a changing climate and growing social-ecological challenges is critical to creating the societal demand and political will required to motivate deep transformations. Answering questions on how the needed transformational change can be achieved will require actively setting and testing hypotheses to refine and characterize our concepts of safer spaces for social-ecological systems across scales. This effort will demand prioritizing key areas of innovation, such as (1) improved adaptive management and governance of social-ecological systems; (2) development of meaningful and relevant integrated indicators of social-ecological systems; (3) gathering of quality integrated data, information, knowledge and analytical tools for improved models and scenarios in time frames and at scales relevant for decision-making; and (4) establishment of legitimate and empowered science policy dialogues on local to international scales to facilitate decision making informed by metrics and indicators of safe operating spaces.

Agriculture is considered to be "climate-smart" when it contributes to increasing food security, adaptation and mitigation in a sustainable way. This new concept now dominates current discussions in agricultural development because of its capacity to unite the agendas of the agriculture, development and climate change communities under one brand. In this opinion piece authored by scientists from a variety of international agricultural and climate research communities, we argue that the concept needs to be evaluated critically because the relationship between the three dimensions is poorly understood, such that practically any improved agricultural practice can be considered climate-smart. This lack of clarity may have contributed to the broad appeal of the concept. From the understanding that we must hold ourselves accountable to demonstrably better meet human needs in the short and long term within foreseeable local and planetary limits, we develop a conceptualization of climate-smart agriculture as agriculture that can be shown to bring us closer to safe operating spaces for agricultural and food systems across spatial and temporal scales. Improvements in the management of agricultural systems that bring us significantly closer to safe operating spaces will require transformations in governance and use of our natural resources, underpinned by enabling political, social and economic conditions beyond incremental changes. Establishing scientifically credible indicators and metrics of long-term safe operating spaces in the context of a changing climate and growing social-ecological challenges is critical to creating the societal demand and political will required to motivate deep transformations. Answering questions on how the needed transformational change can be achieved will require actively setting and testing hypotheses to refine and characterize our concepts of safer spaces for social-ecological systems across scales. This effort will demand prioritizing key areas of innovation, such as (1) improved adaptive management and governance of social-ecological systems; (2) development of meaningful and relevant integrated indicators of social-ecological systems; (3) gathering of quality integrated data, information, knowledge and analytical tools for improved models and scenarios in time frames and at scales relevant for decision-making; and (4) establishment of legitimate and empowered science policy dialogues on local to international scales to facilitate decision making informed by metrics and indicators of safe operating spaces.