Abstract:
Addressing the global challenges of climate change, food security, and poverty
alleviation requires enhancing the adaptive capacity and mitigation potential
of agricultural landscapes across the tropics. However, adaptation and mitigation
activities tend to be approached separately due to a variety of technical,
political, financial, and socioeconomic constraints. Here, we demonstrate that
many tropical agricultural systems can provide both mitigation and adaptation
benefits if they are designed and managed appropriately and if the larger landscape
context is considered. Many of the activities needed for adaptation and
mitigation in tropical agricultural landscapes are the same needed for sustainable
agriculture more generally, but thinking at the landscape scale opens a
new dimension for achieving synergies. Intentional integration of adaptation
and mitigation activities in agricultural landscapes offers significant benefits
that go beyond the scope of climate change to food security, biodiversity conservation,
and poverty alleviation. However, achieving these objectives will
require transformative changes in current policies, institutional arrangements,
and funding mechanisms to foster broad-scale adoption of climate-smart approaches
in agricultural landscapes.
