Adapting agriculture to climate change: which pathways behind policy initiatives?

Climate change is increasingly affecting agriculture worldwide, causing yield losses and undermining food security. Behind the international consensus on the urgent need for ambitious policies to adapt agriculture to climate change (AACC) hides a competition between three agricultural models—agroecology, climate-smart agriculture, and conventional agriculture—each carrying distinctive perspective on how agriculture should adapt to climate change. To date, no study has shown which of these three agricultural models is promoted the most by climate change adaptation policies. To shed light on this question, we undertook semi-structured surveys with resource persons, a literature review and a multi-criteria analysis, identifying and characterizing 226 AACC policy initiatives in seven countries or regions in the north (Andalusia, Occitanie, California, Guadeloupe) and the south (Colombia, South Africa, Senegal). Our aim was to identify (1) concrete strategic options mobilized by policy initiatives to adapt agriculture to climate change and (2) agricultural models that are implicitly or explicitly promoted by these policy initiatives. We identified 14 climate change adaptation options that mobilize a set of three complementary levers of action: (i) transforming production systems or enabling access to productive resources, (ii) providing access to knowledge that is useful for AACC, and (iii) coordinating and financing adaptation actions at territorial or sector scale. Agroecology and climate-smart agriculture are the two agricultural models favored in the mix of policy initiatives in all the studied sites. Despite conceptual differences, in real-life situations, these models do not conflict with each other since they are often promoted concomitantly. AACC policy initiatives, although diversified, seem too fragmented and not sufficiently restrictive to bring about rapid and profound change. This paper presents a new classification of AACC adaptation options, and is the first to reveal which agricultural models are promoted by policy initiatives in a wide range of regions.