24 September 2014: A coalition formed by 14 governments and 32 organizations will aim to enable 500 million farmers around the world to practice climate-smart agriculture. The ‘Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture’ was launched during the Climate Summit, on 23 September, and the Alliance held its first meeting on 24 September in New York, US.

The Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA), will work for: sustainable and equitable increases in agricultural productivity and incomes; increased resilience of food systems and farming livelihoods; and reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture. The Alliance will also aim to boost food and nutrition security through climate-adjusted and natural-resource efficient agricultural practices, food systems and social policies.

The Alliance members, which include governments, farmers, scientists, businesses, civil society, and regional and international organizations, represent millions of farmers, a quarter of the world’s cereal production, 43 million undernourished people and 16% of global agricultural GHG emissions.

The Alliance’s Action Plan, released during the Summit, includes a target of enabling 500 million farmers to practice CSA by 2030. Other targets will be set with Alliance partners and monitored annually. Members will inform the Alliance on actions taken and impact achieved. Participants to the agriculture ‘action area’ of the Summit also issued an Action Statement outlining key global challenges and goals in the areas of agriculture, food security and nutrition.

It was also announced that a North-American CSA Alliance would be launched in 2015. This regional alliance would seek to help farmers, ranchers and forests to adapt to climate change, enhance resilience and ease production process-related risks. The Africa CSA Alliance, established in May 2014, is working to help 25 million farming households across the region to practice CSA by 2025.

A series of commitments were made during the Summit, including by: three major food industry companies to increase the amount of food produced with climate-smart approaches; the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Bank to elevate the share of 100%, or approximately US$11 billion, of their agricultural investment portfolios climate-smart by 2018; the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) to allocate US$10.2 billion over the next ten years to CSA; and the Climate and Clean Air Coalition’s Agriculture Initiative to support reductions in methane and black carbon emitted during agriculture-related processes.

Peter Kendall, President of the World Farmers’ Organisation (WFO), represented the global agricultural community – small, medium and large-scale farmers – at the launch of the Global Alliance for CSA. He underlined that CSA offers “triple wins of increased food production, climate change mitigation, and adaptation.”

The Inaugural Meeting of the Global Alliance for CSA, held a day after the launch, brought together the Alliance partners to celebrate its formation and discuss organization, initiatives and actions in support of the Alliance. Among other things, meeting participants discussed a roadmap for the next year, working arrangements for the Alliance and its work programme. [UN Press Release] [Global Alliance for CSA Action Plan] [2014 Climate Summit Action Statement] [2014 Climate Summit Action Plans for Supporting Announcements] [FAO Press Release on Global Alliance for CSA Inaugural Meeting] [IISD RS Coverage of the 2014 Climate Summit] [WFO Website] [WFO Press Release]