Climate Smart Agriculture and REDD+ in landscapes. From national design to local implementation

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) and Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) are two parallel but complementary programs that aim at sustainable development and climate change mitigation and adaptation. REDD+ focuses mainly on forest conservation at the landscape scale while and CSA is centred on agriculture innovation at the farm/production scale.

In my PhD I assess the effectiveness of CSA and REDD+ programs in achieving food security, livelihood improvement along with climate change mitigation and adaptation goals. I perform this assessment via different levels of analysis, from policy assessment to local implementation, structured in the following four research objectives/articles:

• Objective 1: Assess how REDD+ national policies link to drivers of deforestation and elaborate on implications for monitoring systems. To this aim I conducted a review of 98 REDD+ readiness documents.
• Objective 2: Introduce a framework to assess how regional policies aimed at agriculture intensification and forest conservation can be re-designed by considering decision-making of local farmers in adopting CSA and reducing agriculture-driven deforestation. I applied the framework to a case study in the central highlands of Vietnam.
• Objective 3: Assess the role of participatory approaches in triggering social learning and social organization for the adoption and up-scale of CSA practices. I conducted this research in a case study in South Amazonas, Brazil.
• Objective 4: Assess the role of agribusiness companies in facilitating Climate Smart Landscapes (CSL). The research aims at conducting a review of integrated landscape initiatives conducted by agribusiness companies and their contribution in achieving CSL goals: food security, livelihood provisions, sustained ecosystem services and resource use efficiency.