Climate Smart Sustainable Agriculture - Uganda

Farmers in Uganda, especially women farmers, have a wealth of knowledge and experience when it comes to coping with climate change. Climate Smart Sustainable Agriculture (CSSA) encourages farmers to use their knowledge to contribute to climate change mitigation adaptation practices in their communities.

Fast facts:

69 women have been directly reached through this activity;
Mitigation practices that farmers can choose from include tree planting/agroforestry, easy to assemble energy saving stoves, tree conservation and restoration and beekeeping.

The problem

Smallholder farmers, especially women farmers, are the most susceptible to the negative effects of climate change.

The solution

The Climate Smart Sustainable Agriculture model uses an integrated approach to ensure that farmers can contribute to climate change mitigation and at the same time adapt to climate change. It provides a wide range of practices and communities and individual households can select practices based on their situation, instead of having practices imposed on them. The CSSA model also promotes various cost effective location specific and gender sensitive adaptation strategies such as; appropriate on and off farm water harvesting techniques, soil and water conservation, integrated farming practices for both crops and livestock, compound gardening techniques such as mandala gardens, sack gardens which are easy to manage even in a prolonged drought, micro irrigation practices and planting of adapted crop varieties.

Helping the planet

The CSSA model promotes many conservation and preservation practices. By encouraging farmers to plant trees, avoid deforestation and save energy with energy saving cookstoves, this activity is preventing excess greenhouse gas emissions from entering the atmosphere.

Helping people

This activity established the Climate Smart Sustainable Agriculture committee that is responsible for steering the implementation of the model at local level. The committee ensures that women are equally represented and their contributions are regarded with equal respect as to that of men. The CSSA model builds women’s capacity to assume leadership roles by helping them to generate experience and build their confidence.

Scaling up

The CSSA model focuses on promoting affordable climate smart technologies that vulnerable communities can adopt even without donor support. The model also enables communities to assess their challenges and generate the climate smart solutions within their reach, creating a sense of ownership. The model also trains selected farmers as community based trainers and has established demonstration gardens at the community level, which enables scalability of the practices being promoted.