Draft climate smart agriculture strategic framework

The Draft climate smart agriculture strategic framework, available for comments, "outlines the role that Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) can play in addressing vulnerabilities facing the agriculture sector. Various stakeholders, and farmers, have a role to play in promoting resource efficiency, increased productivity and social equity through mitigation and adaptation efforts. All South Africans have a role to play through implementation of this framework in ensuring sustainability of the agriculture sector as one of the anchors of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Targeted efforts will be made to ensure that women, youth, people living with disability and subsistence farmers are involved in implementation of this framework.

This Framework starts from the premise that the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (AFF) sector’s adaptive capacity is closely linked to South Africa’s level of economic development, based on factors such as the range of technological options available, the availability of resources, and the stock of human capital. In policymaking and CSA implementation, the Framework emphasises factors such as vulnerability, the structure of critical institutions, risk perception, and patterns of decision-making authority. The Framework therefore emphasises that the goal of promoting effective adaptation responses and increasing adaptive capacity should be to reduce vulnerability and increase overall resilience of South Africa’s AFF systems, including their socio-economic and institutional characteristics."