The Sustainable Development Network (SDN) Forum was held during the past two weeks at the World Bank in Washington DC. This year’s topic was Green Growth for All. Different departments of the World Bank - including agriculture, water, ICT, transport, and environment - held panel discussions and training sessions on operations centred on green growth. This e-Agriculture forum is purposed as a follow-up to that event and the on-going debates on green growth.
Green growth is on the top of the agricultural development agenda. Climate change, scarce natural resources, population growth, and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) are all contributing to reductions in agricultural productivity and increased poverty. Farming practices such as diverse crop rotations have stabilized soils, but others like overgrazing have resulted in land degradation. Some assessments predict that world agriculture productivity will decline 3-16% by the 2080s (Cline 2007) due to these threats.
Despite the pessimism, climate-smart agriculture can change these projections. But what exactly is climate-smart agriculture? Marjory-Ann Bromhead explains climate-smart agriculture and what the World Bank is doing to promote it in the following video:
" Climate-smart agriculture seeks to increase sustainable productivity in an environmentally and socially sustainable way, strengthen farmers’ resilience to climate change, reduce agriculture’s contribution to climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing carbon storage on famland. It strengthens food security and delivers environmental benefits. Climate-smart agriculture includes proven practical techniques—such as mulching, intercropping, conservation agriculture, crop rotation, integrated crop-livestock management, agroforestry, improved grazing, and improved water management—and innovation practices such as better weather forecasting, more resilient food crops and risk insurance." The World Bank (2011)
A variety of strategies can help to achieve green growth. Carbon financing, improving genetic traits in crops, scaling up better farming practices (such as crop rotation, agroforestry, etc.), and reducing greenhouse gas emissions are just some of the ways to achieve green growth. Yet what is the role of information and communication technologies (ICT)? How can information and communication technologies help to collect data on green growth, disseminate information on green growth, and achieve green growth directly on smallholder farms? Two Sourcebook modules, Increasing Crop, Livestock, and Fishery Productivity through ICT, and ICT Applications for Risk Management, discuss trends and ICT tools that hold promise for green growth. This forum is purposed to explore these areas further.
This forum explores two main areas where ICT can be used to achieve climate-smart agriculture:
Tools for land use planning and management
Risk management tools for climate change adaptation
Hello and welcome all to this forum. Our colleagues at the World Bank have prepared some introductory information in this "Forum Concept" thread and in the "Topic 1" thread. Read these and then share your thoughts about questions 1, 2 and 3 in their respective discussion threads.
If you have any questions about this forum, please let me know here or write to us at [email protected]
Hello and welcome all to this forum. Our colleagues at the World Bank have prepared some introductory information in this "Forum Concept" thread and in the "Topic 1" thread. Read these and then share your thoughts about questions 1, 2 and 3 in their respective discussion threads.
If you have any questions about this forum, please let me know here or write to us at [email protected]
cheers, Michael