Lisa Elena Fuchs

Agroecology, as conceptualised in the thirteen HLPE principles, embeds justice dimensions in the place-based sustainable transition pathways it supports, yet operationalising just agroecological transitions is understudied and remains a design and implementation challenge. In this paper, we apply Schlosberg's four-dimensional justice framework post-hoc, distinguishing distributive, procedural, recognition, and capabilities justice, to six country-level Vision to Action participatory visioning processes conducted under the CGIAR Agroecology Initiative in India, Kenya, Peru, Senegal, Tunisia, and Zimbabwe. Although these processes had not been designed with explicit justice objectives, justice-relevant content emerged across them: competing visions revealed whose values are at stake in the transition; the composition and design of sessions determined whose knowledge shaped transition pathways; and intra-transition trade-offs revealed who bears the costs of change. The analysis revealed shared concerns around food security, fair returns, gender equity, and reduced external input dependence, which took locally specific forms. Capabilities concerns shaped transition pathways more than distributive and recognition claims; and a recurrent tension between visions of input autonomy and pathways of input substitution emerged. Government and private-sector actors were less represented than farmers but were generally assigned significant responsibility for enabling the transition. We argue that participatory multi-stakeholder visioning creates the conditions under which the justice content of agroecological transitions becomes visible, negotiable, and translatable into action planning. Establishing an explicit justice framing ex ante would allow deliberate choices on participant disaggregation while systematic mapping and engagement strategies for absent actors would allow future processes to embed justice-relevant content explicitly from the design stage.

Urgent action is needed to address climate change, land degradation, and biodiversity loss. The Regreening Africa project (2017–2023), recently recognized as a UN World Restoration Flagship, aimed to reverse land degradation over large areas of land for the triple benefit of people, biodiversity, and climate in eight African countries. Based on projections and early lessons learned, the project sought to identify sustainable scaling models to achieve its ambitious targets. The so-called “Asset-Based Community-driven Development (ABCD) in Regreening” project aimed to demonstrate the positive contribution of deliberate community engagement and co-design. The project introduced ABCD sessions to 30 purposively selected community groups in the Regreening intensification sites in western Kenya. ABCD combines a unique set of framings, methods, and processes that focus on people’s assets and agency, and emphasizes the importance of their attitudes toward self and others for sustainable behavior change. To evidence that ABCD intrinsically contributes to sustainable adoption and scaling of Regreening practices, the project developed the F-ACT+ tool to assess the alignment between ABCD and agroecological practices, and collected baseline and endline data from 300 project and 300 non-project participants. Results showed accelerated agroecological integration among ABCD project participants. ABCD participants showed significant improvements in nine agroecological principles and eight system components, particularly in the economic diversification, social values and diets, and knowledge co-creation principles, as well as in the pest and disease, household, and value chain system components. Summary ATT between ABCD and non-ABCD respondents was positive and significant in 10 principles and eight system components. The results support the synergistic contribution of ABCD to projects targeting sustainable behavior change at the individual and collective levels. Due to its focus on outcomes, this study provided limited insight into the specific mechanisms of ABCD, which are the subject of a separate publication on parallel theory-based contribution analysis work.

Agroforestry has potential to address the adverse effects of climate change through carbon sequestration, increasing biodiversity and improving adaptive capacity and resilience among smallholder farmers. However, this potential is context specific and insufficiently quantified in smallholder faming systems, partly because of inherent variability of smallholder farms. Our study aimed to determine the tree/shrub diversity and carbon stocks in different agroforestry systems within smallholder farms in two 100 km² sites, the so-called lower and middle Nyando sites, in western Kenya. In both, context-specific agroforestry adoption had been promoted among households of four community associations through an asset-based community development (ABCD) approach. Their farms were assessed and compared with those of relevant comparison samples. Trees and shrubs were inventoried on a total of 106 farms, and their formations classified in five major agroforestry practices: hedgerows, multipurpose trees on farm (MPT), riparian buffers, woodlots, and boundary planting. To assess above-ground biomass (AGB) of individual trees/shrubs, diameter at breast height measurements were taken. Strong regional differences were considered in data analysis and presentation. Altogether, 3,353 and 6,346 trees/shrubs were inventoried in the lower and middle Nyando sites, respectively. AGB was significantly higher in middle than in lower Nyando. Woodlots had the highest amount of AGB carbon stock, while MPT had the highest diversity of tree/shrub species in all the groups. Conversely, boundary planting had the highest number of trees/shrubs inventoried and hence was the most common agroforestry practice across all the samples in both regions. Dominant AGB contributor species were Grevillea robusta (37.8%) in middle, and Eurphobia tirucalli (16.5%) in lower Nyando. This study provides empirical evidence that asset-based and community-driven selection and implementation of both tree/shrub species and agroforestry practices can contribute positively to species and practice diversity, which are associated with AGB carbon stock levels and wider agro-ecosystem diversity. This study hence provides benchmark information that is relevant for SDG goal 15 on “life on land,” and various specific targets, and can inform sustainable establishment of carbon sink facilities by supporting smallholders to uptake contextually suitable and economically sensible agroforestry practices in an overall effort to foster and support sustainable development.

To improve their ability to plan for and respond to potential negative impacts of climate shocks, such as droughts and dry spells, in the Sahelian agricultural production systems, many farmers have adopted diversified coping and adaptation strategies to secure their livelihoods. However, the scientific understanding of the key factors that determine the decisions that these pastoralist and agro-pastoralist households make, as well as the relation between existing human, social, natural, physical and financial assets and the adoption of adaptation practices at the household level has remained insufficient. Therefore, multivariate probit estimates were used to identify the key drivers of multiple adoption of climate-smart agro-pastoral adaptation practices in the Sudano-Sahelian zone of Burkina Faso. The results indicated that respondent households adopted a combination of adaptation practices rather than a single practice. Most of these practices aimed at enhancing household food security and livelihoods. Regarding the variables that are related to the adoption of these adaptation practices overall, a few assets were found to contribute significantly to the decision to adopt the assessed adaption practices. These include the possession of household and farm assets and equipment, membership in associations and assistance from government, farming experience of the household head, access to credit, as well as ownership and size of farmland. In addition, access to climate and agronomic information, as well as a household’s location within a specifically dedicated pastoral zone, enhanced uptake of various adaptation practices in this study. Access to these assets and features hence plays a critical role in pastoralists’ and agro-pastoralists’ adaptive capacity. This study provides insights for policy makers in view of climate change adaptation and wider sustainable development planning in the Sudano-Sahelian zone of Africa.

Increasing communities’ adaptive capacity is crucial to enhancing the sustainability of livelihoods and landscapes in smallholder systems. This study evaluates the contributions of an asset-based community-driven local development project, which has an objective to enhance farmer livelihoods through context-specific agricultural and agroforestry training, in line with farmers’ identities, interests, and preferences. The project was implemented in two areas of the wider Nyando river basin: the Lower and Middle Nyando sites. The project effects on farmer livelihoods were evaluated by analyzing overall income enhancement through the adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices via the computation of total values of harvest. Socioeconomic data from 183 households, half of which were involved in the project, were considered. The findings showed that locality played an important role in the adoption and success of good agricultural practices. Additional significant positive factors included project participation, size of land operated, horticulture farming, livestock ownership, ownership of a title deed, hours worked, and crop species richness. The number of years farmed had a significant negative correlation with the value of harvest. Considering the stark differences in livelihood effects in both sites, researchers conclude that external support for climate-smart agriculture uptake needs to be considerate of, and respond to, biophysical and socioeconomic context.

The efficiency and sustainability of climate change adaptation projects depend on appropriate models and tools to take climate‐smart practices to scale. This paper presents the “Building assets and agency” approach taken by the Accelerating Adoption of Agroforestry project whose objective is to scale the adoption of context‐specific adaptation and mitigation options. Through the approach, communities are encouraged to identify, mobilise, and use their existing assets to define community plans that are responsive to their identities, interests, and preferences. This innovative approach combines conscious selection of project staff and partners, group capacity and agency training, cocreation of skills in self‐selected agricultural practices with an emphasis on business skills, and tools for sustainable scaling through farmer‐to‐farmer extension. The paper addresses challenges and solutions, and case study data justifying proof of concept. While developed in a climate change context, and being sensitive to a number of factors, the approach can support effective, efficient, and socially appropriate action in any sector.