Agricultural technologies for climate change mitigation and adaptation in developing countries: policy options for innovation and technology diffusion

Climate Change exacerbates the already serious challenges facing the agricultural sector, particularly in developing countries. This paper highlights technological and institutional innovations required to meet these challenges and suggests ways to overcome the constraints to their development.

The authors note that agriculture is highly Greenhouse gas (GHG) intensive. Thus, concerns about adapting to climate change are emerging as additional innovation priorities. In this context, the paper underlines that while new traits, varieties and crops will play an important role, the range of relevant practices and technologies is much broader than this; it includes water management, production practices, post-harvest technologies, information and forecasting, and insurance.

Nevertheless, the process of transferring agricultural innovations across agro-ecological and climatic zones is often subject to agronomic constraints. Usually, the most binding constraints occur at the adoption stage, with several factors potentially impeding poor farmers’ access to and use of new technologies. So, existing technology options must be made more available and accessible without overlooking complementary capacity and investments.

Moreover, the paper reflects these two findings:

• policies and institutions that promote economic development and reduce poverty will often improve agricultural adaptation and may also pave the way for more effective climate change mitigation through agriculture
• trade will play a critical role in both mitigation and adaptation, but will itself be shaped importantly by climate change

The document concludes with the following policy recommendations:

• rebuilding and expanding public agricultural research capacity in developing countries
• harnessing agricultural biotechnology as a potentially important option
• encouraging complementarities between public and private agricultural research, helping to mitigate risk
• investing in better information and forecasts
• supporting competitive and responsive agricultural markets
• encouraging investments that improve spatial market integration