Agricultural Extension and Advisory Services in Support of Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation: An Evidence Review

The effects of climate change on agriculture and food production are evident in regions around the world. Effective climate change adaptation and mitigation in the agricultural sector calls for multiple context specific, and at times complex, strategies. Promoting these strategies effectively involves changing the behavior, strategies and agricultural practices of millions of producers. Studies point to the current role agricultural extension and advisory services (EAS) provided by public, private and civil society organizations play in promoting climate change adaptation and mitigation at scale and additional roles they could potentially play.

This evidence review aims to document the various roles and functions played by EAS in climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts. It also identifies challenges, as well as the capacities and support EAS need to effectively contribute to climate change adaptation and mitigation in agriculture. To do this, over 500 journal articles and other documents were reviewed and analyzed using the innovation management framework, which recognizes the wide range of roles and functions to be performed for innovation and impact at scale. The review identifies and describes eight roles played by EAS in climate change adaptation and mitigation:

• Delivering climate advisory services,
• promoting seeds of stress-tolerant varieties of crops,
• promoting climate resilient value chains,
• supporting farmers to adopt alternative farming practices,
• promoting resource efficient technologies,
• supporting mitigation through market-based mechanisms,
• promoting agroforestry, and
• promoting social inclusion in climate action.

The review also identifies ten major functions played by EAS to promote climate change adaptation and mitigation. These include:

• Creating awareness on adaptation and mitigation measures,
• demonstrating new technologies and practices,
• developing educational and training materials,
• organizing trainings and learning events,
• improving access to inputs, • mobilizing communities for collective action,
• promoting digital decision support tools,
• supporting communities to secure community rights,
• stakeholder coordination, and
• policy advocacy.

However, low capacity means some of the roles and functions played by EAS are not performed effectively. While public sector EAS providers play an important role in areas that are primarily focused on adaptation, such as promoting stress tolerant varieties and alternative farming practices, EAS’ contributions to promoting climate resilient value chains and other areas primarily focused on mitigation interventions such as agroforestry, improved technologies, and market-based mitigation mechanisms, is more limited. This is due to the generally low level of funding for EAS, the lack of relevant mechanisms to ensure multistakeholder coordination, the limited 6 technical and functional capacities to promote adaptation and mitigation efforts among EAS staff and a lack of explicit recognition of the contributions of EAS to enhancing climate resilience. This review recommends the following measures to enhance the contribution of EAS to climate change adaptation and mitigation:

• Include a climate focus in the goals of EAS: Explicit climate objectives are needed to draw attention to climate change adaptation and mitigation at both organizational- and individual-levels of EAS and to ensure that EAS providers and systems are fully accountable to achieving specific climate adaptation and mitigation targets.
• Build the evidence on the contributions of EAS to climate actions: To support an increased climate focus, there is a need to generate a more robust evidence-base on the contributions of EAS to climate change adaptation and mitigation, including agricultural practices that enhance climate resilience.
• Explore new roles and functions for EAS: To be able to effectively address the climate crisis, EAS in most countries need to undergo reforms to shift away from a technology transfer paradigm to a more demand-led approach that emphasizes co-creation with producers, use of effective communication and dissemination tools as well as effective mechanisms to coordinate multiple actors.
• Strengthen technical and functional capacities of EAS: EAS providers from public, private and civil society organizations need upgraded technical and functional capacities in different approaches to managing climate change (e.g. climate smart agriculture, agrotecology, regenerative agriculture), in facilitating farmer experimentation and responding to the needs of women, youth, and other marginalized farmers, as well as in soft skills such as facilitation, multistakeholder coordination and brokerage.
• Increase sustainable funding for EAS: Both public and private EAS providers need finances to hire more local-level staff and to cover the operational expenses associated with organizing farmer training and demonstrations, adopting new innovative, including digital, approaches, and providing tools and training for their staff.
• Create extension policies that emphasize the role of EAS for climate action: Extension policies should explicitly outline the role of EAS in a country’s development strategy broadly and their role in national climate adaptation and mitigation plans.
• Recognize the contribution of EAS in national climate strategies and plans: Explicit recognition of the contribution of EAS in achieving climate resilience and positioning these services as important actors that can support upscaling climate adaptation and mitigation technologies and strategies is critical for ensuring that EAS receive policy and financial support.
• Direct climate funds to agriculture and EAS: Climate initiatives in agriculture should explicitly fund public and private EAS to strengthen their abilities to contribute to adaptation and mitigation