Social Systems

Climate-smart landscapes for promoting sustainability of Pacific Island agricultural systems

Overview

This project aims to use community management of agricultural landscapes to increase or protect environmental livelihoods from climate change.

South Pacific islands are vulnerable to climate change. Their geography exposes them to shocks and stresses, and their economies rely on agriculture. The region needs climate compatible agriculture to cope with climate change. Climate-smart landscapes emphasise sustainable livelihoods, resilience to climate change, and environmental sustainability. Climate-smart landscapes for sustainable agriculture are a new concept in the South Pacific and need to be promoted. This project will help communities to develop adaptation pathways to agricultural practices so that landscape management becomes climate-smart. This will protect livelihoods from climate while preserving environmental sustainability.

Expected outcomes

Community capacity enhanced to: gather and use geospatial information; visualise and assess coping capacity to climate stressors; and capture and archive their climate-livelihoods-landscape knowledge.
Higher-level stakeholder capacity enhanced to: use geospatial data for understanding community livelihoods and landscapes; and recognise where landscape interventions could address climate impacts with respect to differing community groups (e.g. men/women).
Communication capacity enhanced to increase communication between communities and higher-level stakeholders, and to ensure better targeting of climate adaptation policy/projects within the landscape.