Presented by Barry Shapiro (ILRI) at a Consultative Meeting on Strengthening CGIAR - EARS partnerships for effective agricultural transformation in Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, 4–5 December 2014

1. Sustainable Intensification and Climate Change: An EARS-CGIAR
Mega-program Initiative In support of the Government of
Ethiopia and the African Union
Barry Shapiro (ILRI)
Strengthening CGIAR - EARS partnerships for effective agricultural transformation in Ethiopia
Consultative Meeting, 4 – 5 December 2014

2. EARS-CGIAR Program on Sustainable Intensification and
Climate Change: Origin and Development
• The GOE accepted to be the lead country in the African Union
(AU) on Climate Change
• MOA State Minister for Agriculture, HE Ato Wondirad asked ILRI
to coordinate development of an EARS-CGIAR Mega-program on
Sustainable Intensification and Climate Change
• Draft SI&CC Mega-Program concept note was developed and
discussed with EIAR and CG center senior scientists. Research
pillars identified and pillar concept note (CN) drafts developed
• More buy-in and contributions from more NARS and CG scientists
through EARS-CG Partner Dialogue CN presentation
• Another round of pillar CN development
• Integration/synthesis workshop end of January to finalize the CN
• Share with donors and other stakeholders thru REF&FS TCs to get
funding

3. Sustainable Intensification and Climate Change
Background
• As the world enters the Sustainable Development Goals
era (post MDGs), the challenge of feeding a growing
population in Africa remains
• The challenge is easily stated but more difficult to achieve:
How do we sustainably produce more food for people and
feed for livestock?
• Recently the concept of ‘sustainable intensification’ or
‘sustainable agricultural intensification’ had been used to
summarize the challenge (SDSN, 2013)
• How to define SI and how to measure SI remain issues?

4. Smallholder Agriculture is Crucial to the Future
of Agriculture in Africa
The challenge is to:
• Increase the primary productivity of both food crops
and feed for livestock (about 40% of agricultural GDP
and growing)
• Produce higher incomes and improved livelihoods for
smallholder farmers
• Promote social equity
• Protect and enhance natural resources (soil, water,
biodiversity) and ecosystem services
• Create an enabling environment and institutions
• Increase social equity

5. The Critical Role of Research in Increasing
Primary Productivity
Increasing primary productivity is critical, but to
achieve this:
• Research is needed to identify development pathways
and models – for SI of smallholder agriculture
• Two ways research on increasing primary productivity
can contribute to SI:
- Research is needed on how existing technologies and
information can be used to close the ‘yield gap’
- What new technologies and approaches can be
developed to increase potential productivity (the
‘yield potential’)

6. The Challenge of Climate Change to
productivity improvements
For agriculture the challenge is three-fold:
• Agricultural production, via land use change and especially
livestock production contributes to global warming which is
responsible for climate change
• Increased temperatures and altered precipitation patterns
caused by climate change will sometimes radically change
growing conditions for crops and livestock:
₋ Direct impacts on productivity but also key ecosystem
services (water, soils, biodiversity, pests and diseases, etc.).
• Push for ‘climate smart’ agriculture creates incentives and
constraints for farmer adoption of agricultural technologies
and strategies.

7. Advantages of Creating “Laboratory Sites”
in Ethiopia
We propose a new “laboratory site” approach to research
on SI&CC to be started in Ethiopia and then extended to
rest of Africa:
• Ethiopia offers an environment in which many of the global
challenges are manifest
• Ethiopia provides a unique location in which the research can
be conducted on SI&CC
• Ethiopia has a varied topography which creates a range of
agro-ecologies found in Africa
• 11 of the 15 global CGIAR Centres have offices in Addis
Ababa, plus ICIPE
• Inter-Centre partnership could provide a model for R4D in
other parts of the world

8. Why Start Laboratory locations in Ethiopia and
then Extend to Rest of Africa
• One of the fifteen most populous nations, with a high rate of
poverty, mainly in rural areas – population is growing rapidly
• One of the countries in Africa most likely to be affected by
climate change and must intensify
• Faces challenges in food and nutrition security
• GOE embraced agriculture sector development as an engine
of economic growth and the development of a green
economy - CRGE
• High potential for agricultural and livestock development to
improve incomes and livelihoods and increase social welfare
• Headquarters to the Africa Union (AU) which provides an
opportunity to link to the African agricultural research
network and CAADP

9. Objectives for a new research program SI&CC in
Ethiopia and Africa
• Create a world class research program focused on
increasing productivity from small-holder farming
systems
• Build capacity of EARS/EARS
• Contribute to food security and economic development
in a way that takes does not degrade the natural
resource base and future potential climate scenarios
• Focus on increasing primary productivity to produce
more food and livestock fodder
• Extended to key laboratory locations in Ethiopia and
then to the rest of Africa through a network of sites and
organizations

10. Key Components of the program
• Targeting analysis: Ex-ante analysis of options
for increasing productivity, based on agro-ecology,
climate, market potential, etc., using a
suite of modeling techniques
• Up-stream research using new biotechnology
techniques to generate new plant materials
with higher productivity, wider adaptation and
greater environmental sustainability through
lower input use per unit of usable yield

11. Key Components of the program (cont’d)
• Better use of the CGIAR gene banks (including
the ILRI forage gene bank in Addis) will be a
major resource for this research
• Long-term field research at “laboratory sites” to
test new crop and forage material, including
dual purpose crops providing food and feed in a
range of agro-ecological conditions
• Farming systems research to pilot, test and
develop options for increasing total farm
productivity, income, and protecting
environment

12. Key Components of the program (cont’d)
• Socio-economic and policy research to identify and
promote the policy, institutional and organizational
frameworks for “climate-smart” sustainable
intensification, including market access and institutions
and equity aspects including gender
• Capacity Development: The focus will be on on-the-project
training for devising, adapting, and applying
systems, tools and guidelines for benchmarking, reporting,
disseminating, and improving capacity development
across the project as a whole
Each component will have clearly defined outputs, outcomes
and potential impacts.

13. Implementation Plan
• Phase 1 -- a number of ‘laboratory sites’ will be
established within Ethiopia to undertake field trials and
systems research.
• Phase 2 -- a network of ‘laboratory sites’ in different
parts of Africa will be established.
• This research links to CGIAR Research Programs (CRPs) -
Drylands, Humid Tropics, Policy Institutions and
Markets, several of the commodity CRPs, Water Land
and Ecosystems and CCAFS.
• The program will also make use of research facilities in
other locations, such as the ILRI-BeCA hub in Nairobi
and the laboratories and facilities in other Centers and
partners (capacity-building opportunities)

14. Potential SI&CC “Laboratory Sites”
in Key Production Zones
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15. SI&CC -- Questions and Issues
• What is sustainability and how can it be practically be measured?
• How can policy promote or hinder sustainable intensification?
• What is the role of LTR in studying SI&CC?
• How can trade-offs in sustainability and intensification avoided to lead to
improved incomes and livelihoods, and environmental protection?
• How can sustainable intensification be achieved in the face of climate
change?
• How will livestock production fare versus crop production in the face of
climate change?
• Can gene mining create crops and feeds that are climate smart?
• What will smallholder farming systems look like in the LT under likely
climate change scenarios?
• Do we need to go beyond focusing on “hot spots” and also identify and
work in “sweet spots”?

16. SI&CC Program Pillars
• What is sustainable intensification and how SI be achieved in the face of CC
• How can SI be measured -- what are practical indicators at all relevant scales
• How long-term trials in laboratory sites can be used to study the risk-resilience
effects of CC and create lasting farming systems that are SI  LTR
• Using gene mining to create crops and feeds which are climate smart
• Ensuring adequate supply of animal feed to lead to sustainable and
intensified animal production to meet meat/milk demand in the face of CC
• How can trade-offs in sustainability and intensification be avoided to lead to
improved incomes and livelihoods, and environmental protection
• Achieving NRM that is consistent with sustainably intensified agricultural
production in the face of climate change
• How policy and impact assessment can promote sustainability
• Capacity development to promote and achieve SI in the face of CC
• What SI smallholder farming systems will look like under climate change

17. What Sustainable Intensification is?
and How can it be Achieved?

18. Regional/global organizations
National organizations and institutions
Local organizations and institutions
More communities More communities
Scaling out (horizontal)
S
C
A
L
I
N
G
U
P
Sustainable Intensification Requires a Functional
Scaling Strategy

19. How to Define and Measure Sustainability
(Sustainability Indicators)
“[Sustainable development is] development that meets the
needs of the present without compromising the ability of
future generations to meet their own needs”
Brundtland commission, 1987
• “… without compromising the needs of future
generations” immediately throws up the question of time-frames
• How can we measure an effect that may not express itself
for decades, centuries or even millennia?
• Difficult to pick out direct measurements that could be
taken in the short term
• How can we identify appropriate proxies and integrate
them into robust (but ultimately untestable) predictive
models?

20. Key Issues around Sustainability Indicators
• A definition of Sustainability?: Achieving development
without compromising the needs of future generations --
seems to be a tall order!
• There are often trade-offs – the longer the time-frame,
the more likely we are to see outcomes that were not the
ones intended by the original, purposeful action; some of
these will, inevitably, be negative
• It would appear that we can only hope to minimize the
adverse impacts of our current activities on the needs of
future generations?
• Need to go beyond focusing on “hot spots” and also
identify and work in “sweet spots”!

21. Key Issues around sustainability indicators
• Agricultural innovation is critical – but a constantly
moving target. This is perhaps the most significant
challenge to finding sustainable solutions:
₋ Innovation that works for a population density of 200
people per square km may not work 20 years later,
when each km hosts 300 or more people
• Values of environmental parameters (mean temperatures,
rainfall availability and distribution) are shifting rapidly,
only partially predictable and, we hope, under the
influence of mitigation measures (at multiple scales).
How do we define the environmental ‘sweet spots’ on
which to target sustainable innovation and how does this
affect the indicators that constitute our evidence base?

22. A multi-scale framework for practical
sustainability assessment
• Indicators established at nested scales:
– Plot
– Farm
– Household
– “Zone of influence”
• Sustainability assessment across five domains
– Productivity
– Economic
– Human
– Environmental
– Social

23. How it will work – indicators and trade-offs
Productivity
100.0
80.0
60.0
40.0
20.0
0.0
Economic
Human
Social
Environmen
tal
Plot - field scale
Plot 1
Plot 2
Plot 3
Farm scale
Productivity
100.0
80.0
60.0
40.0
20.0
0.0
Economic
Social
Environmental Human
Aggregated /
augmented
Productivity
Crop yield
Yield stability
Economic
Gross margin
Gross margin
variability
Human
Human Food
quality
Drudgery
Food safety
Environmental
Active Soil C
Cumulative
vegetative cover
Soil chemical
properties
Social
Resource conflict
intensity
Social cohesion

24. Addressing Risk and Resilience
under SI&CC
Aim of the risk and resilience pillar:
• To study interactions between system
components, people and their environment
and model potential future scenarios to
identify baskets of options to allow resource
poor farmers to sustainably intensify their
livelihoods and the environment under
changing climatic conditions

25. Indicative LTR activities
Interdisciplinary Long-term Research (LTR) to test a variety of
approaches within a range of agro-ecological and systems
contexts including:
• Identification and testing of “climate smart” agricultural
technologies to determine if they deliver what is promised in
a changing environment (combined with modelling)
• Identification and long-term testing of mitigation options to
document impact and trade-offs of productivity with
environmental degradation
• Identification and testing of novel technologies to enhance
screening and systems modelling
• Socioeconomic and anthropological studies on farmer
acceptance and preferences for adoption of new
technologies, species/crops and livestock breeds

26. Long-term Research Methods in
Laboratory Sites
• Field and household surveys to collect data on farming
system change and intensification and livelihoods
indicators
• Farmer and community capacity building
• Working at watershed scale too to ensure SI
• Farmer participatory experimentation with crop and
forage varieties, tree species and livestock breeds in on
farm situations
• Remote sensing and modelling for scenario simulation
• Not just LT varietal trials, but also other potential systems
like tree-crop-livestock systems

27. Messages: Communities, Partnerships, Capacities,
Integrating Science and Local Knowledge, Incentives
SSSustainability lessons learned so far:
1. Empower local communities & develop their
leadership capacities
2. Integrate & share scientific and local knowledge;
encourage innovation through “learning by doing”
partnerships
3. Strengthen and transform institutional and human
capacities with a special focus on DAs as the front
line champions
4. Create, align and implement incentives for success

28. Messages: Incentives, Tools, Integration, Value
Chains
5. Adapt and use new learning and planning tools
combined with effective learning processes
6. Integrate appropriate rainwater management
interventions at watershed and basin levels
7. Acknowledge downstream and off-site benefits as
well as up-stream and on-farm costs and benefits
8. Improve markets, value chains and multi-stakeholder
institutions to enhance the benefits & sustainability
of investments

29. Potential NRM to Improve Sustainable
Intensification under Climate Change
• Establishment of a series of nested multi-stakeholder
platforms from Woreda to Zone to Regional levels  design
interventions from bottom up
• Action research to apply practical interventions at woreda
level that are designed to improve land and water
management  integrated approaches
• Experimentation with developing capacity and incentive
structures at woreda level  e.g new incentives for DA’s,
training on systems approaches, rewards for outcomes not
outputs
• Application of new planning and community engagement
tools  e.g. planning simulation games at community level

30. Sustainable Intensification of Agriculture and
Forests in ‘Watershed Laboratory Sites’
With regard to the forestry sector, the GoE:
• Issued its Climate Resilient Green Economy (CRGE) strategy in 2011
with a green growth development path. The CRGE calls for reducing
deforestation and managing forests and woodlands. It calls for
increasing production without necessarily expanding area.
• In Sept 2014, GoE pledged to rehabilitate 22 m ha of degraded lands
and forests (with ‘ex-closures’).
• The NEW Ministry of Environment and Forest is developing its plan
for GTP II, and is keen on achieving convergence with the targets for
the forestry sector set in the CRGE
 What will be the implication of this to agriculture in
general and the livestock sub-sector in particular?
 Can this rehabilitation challenge be turned to an
opportunity to intensify livestock farming?

31. Specific activities in ex-closures as
“Watershed Laboratory Sites”
• Characterize selected watershed ex-closures as “Laboratory Sites”
where area ex-closures with afforestation work are planned (in
terms of governance of access and use)
• Identify opportunities and constraints to achieve forestry and
agroforestry synergies with livestock to achieve both livestock and
forestry objectives at landscape level
• Identify and rank system-level intensification options that will
minimize trade-offs and maximize synergy between
forestry/agroforestry and agriculture/livestock objectives at
landscape level
• Ex-ante evaluation and on-site testing of selected options to
simultaneously achieve agriculture and forestry objectives using
participatory action research

32. Specific activities in ex-closures as “Watershed
Laboratory Sites” - cont’d
• Strengthen forestry-agriculture linkages by nurturing learning/innovation
platforms at different levels (from regional to local)
• Build capacity of frontline development practitioners, researchers, and local
community groups (women, youth, vulnerable, watershed committee, etc.) and
their institutions through tailored training and experience sharing
• Synthesize and share lessons on enabling conditions to sustaining impact and
scaling up of good practices to simultaneously achieve forestry/agroforestry and
agricultural/livestock objectives at landscape level.

33. Socioeconomics and Policy Research to
Support SI under Climate Change
• Understanding the current status of intensification and
sustainability of agriculture in Ethiopia
More in-depth analysis of the status of sustainable agricultural
intensification in the country with household surveys that have
been collected under the Agricultural Growth Program (AGP) and
the USAID Feed-the-Future (FtF) Program
• Farm-level economic analysis and climate change simulations
Study samples of typical Ethiopian farming households and
undertake economic analysis on how climate shocks will affect
them
Page 33

34. Policy Research to Support Sustainable
Intensification under Climate Change
• Economy-wide modeling
Based on Social Accounting Matrices (SAMs) and Computable
General Equilibrium (CGE) models, we can investigate how
climate change might affect Ethiopia’s economy and what the
impact will of possible mitigating policies
• Impact analysis of new technologies and policy change
Impact analysis at the farm level by using Randomized Control
Trials and/or analysis of impacts of policy changes; topics to be
defined
Page 34

35. Capacity Development
• Capacity Development efforts go far beyond the
transfer of knowledge and skills through
training, and cuts across multiple levels –
individual, organizational and institutional.
• Work in this area will follow the elements
highlighted in the Capacity Development
Framework for the 2nd round of CGIAR Research
Programs
• The focus will be on devising, adapting, and
applying systems, tools and guidelines for
benchmarking, reporting, disseminating, and
improving capacity development across the
project as a whole.

36. The CGIAR Capacity Development Framework for the 2nd
round of CGIAR Research Programs
• At its “heart” are the nine elements of
Capacity Development.
• Need to leap from individual learning to
demonstrating livelihood outcomes and
impacts through relevant science and
partnerships
• Effective assessment and strategy
formulation tailored to the cultural,
organizational and institutional contexts
• CapDev effective as a vehicle for
sustainable development if it is embedded
within Impact Pathways (IPs) of the project.
• NARS provide the unambiguous context
and strategic framework for its
implementation.

37. Required Program Investment
• Investments of about US$ 2M are being
undertaken to upgrade the research facilities and
general infrastructure on the Addis campus,
including in feed and genetics laboratories
• More investment will be needed in laboratories,
offices, housing, utilities, field sites, etc.
• Detailed costings are required but the capital
investment is likely to be about US$ 5M
• It is envisaged that the operating costs of the
program will be US$ 10M per year (US$ 50M
over the first 5-year phase)

38. More information:
B.Shapiro@cgiar.org