Digital tools for climate change adaptation and mitigation

This document provides an analysis of digital tools for climate change adaptation and mitigation in agriculture, with a focus on their utility for smallholder farmers. The brief examines the functionalities of available tools, their accessibility, and their alignment with agroecological principles. It offers insights and recommendations for improving the design and implementation of these tools to maximize their impact on climate resilience and low-emission agriculture. This resource is valuable for policy makers, researchers, and practitioners working to promote climate-smart agriculture and sustainable development.

Key Insights

Limited Functionality of Digital Tools

Digital tools for agriculture have limited functions for technical advice and performance assessment in climate change adaptation and mitigation. This limits the capacity of digital tools to support farmers.

Adaptation vs Mitigation

Technical advice tools focus on adaptation more than mitigation, with 92% addressing three or fewer climate change adaptation indicators. This indicates a gap in digital tools addressing climate change mitigation strategies.

Weather Information

Access to weather information and early warning systems is the most common function in technical advisory tools. This highlights the importance of climate-related information for farmers in adapting to changing weather patterns.

GHG Emission Calculators

Performance assessment tools primarily focus on GHG emission calculators. This indicates a focus on quantifying the impact of agricultural practices on greenhouse gas emissions.

Inclusive Communication

Few tools use inclusive communication features like iconography (31%) or voice and video (28%). This suggests a need for more user-friendly interfaces, especially for farmers with limited literacy.

Principle 1: Systematically Assess Entry Points

From the start of a crisis, it is essential to build synergies between relevant systems. This approach ensures resources are used efficiently while meeting immediate and long-term needs.

Coaching Functions and Farmer Input

Tools should provide coaching functions and support farmer input for informed decisions. This highlights the need for tools that enable farmers to weigh trade-offs and add context to their decisions.

Scaling Impacts

Achieving scale requires action recommendations and prioritization of large-scale impacts. This emphasizes that increasing access to tools is not enough; they must also drive meaningful change.

Key Statistics & Data

• Only 28% of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa use mobile internet (GSMA, 2021).
• SMS weather information services enabled smallholders to reduce crop losses by 11-14% in Colombia (Camacho and Conover, 2019).
• 65% of the digital tools identified farmers as either the sole end-user or as one of the end-users.
• The most common adaptation function for tools that included agroecology practices was information or assessment on water conservation or use efficiency.
• Productivity, income, and their stability over time were the most frequently represented function (60%).

Methodology

This policy brief identifies digital tools that provide technical advice and performance assessment and reviewed their features related to climate change adaptation and mitigation in agriculture and food systems. The methodology included:

• Web searches.
• Expert interviews.
• Platforms such as the CGIAR Evidence Clearing House and Digital Agri Hub.
• Classification as “technical advisory” (deliver recommendations regarding farming practices) or “performance assessment” (report on farm outcomes, status or operations).

Implications and Conclusions

The findings highlight the need to improve the design and implementation of digital tools for climate change adaptation and mitigation in agriculture, especially for smallholder farmers in LMICs. The recommendations include:

• Supporting exemplary features for climate change adaptation and mitigation.
• Addressing gaps by improving technical advice for safety nets and climate change mitigation.
• Bundling technical advice and performance assessment.
• Localizing technical advice and performance assessment.
• Developing “coaching” tools for farmers.
• Designing digital tools for scale.