Develop a CSC Plan

Cocoa is cultivated over several decades and many promising adaptation options require many years of lead-time before coming into full effect. Also, in practice, the decision to work on climate resilience often comes from the donor and it has already been prioritized as a relevant intervention. It is nevertheless important to understand the farmer’s priorities. Long term climatic change may be of high relevance for outside actors interested in the sustainability of the system, whereas producers may struggle with daily concerns over food security. Often, decisions are taken on short (daily to seasonal) timescales, in which case long-term projections may be of lesser concern. In these cases, improved resilience to climate variability, supported by climate services based on historical data, realtime monitoring, and shorter-term forecasts, can be the most effective way to build resilience to future changes in climate risk. It can be helpful to remind oneself that sustainable intensification of production is one of the pillars of climate smart cocoa. A promising approach can be to better align basic farming practices with the seasons and establish contingency plans for adverse events, than promoting more advanced interventions such as irrigation that may even require some access to finance.

The CSC practices prioritization can based on the Climate Smart Agriculture Rapid Appraisal (CSA-RA) methodology (Mwongera et al, 2017). The CSA-RA methodology is designed to assess the heterogeneity of local contexts and prioritize context specific CSA options. This is a bottom-up and gender-disaggregated approach that gathers perceptions on climate vulnerability, constraints, and CSA priorities of different social groups (male & female) as well as local experts and authority levels. In workshops, farmers are asked to indicate all agricultural practices that address challenge of climate change based on their knowledge and understanding. The initial list of practices generated by farmers should then revalidated and complemented with local experts’ opinions in the form of discussion in experts’ workshop. Indicators of technical feasibility, applicability, profitability, sustainability, investment capital, market access and resilience to climate variability (e.g. too much rain, too hot, drought, flood, unpredictable weather, etc.) should be used to prioritize practices. The result of this bottom-up approach is a list of validated practices that are readily acceptable to farmers, but that can nevertheless be linked to observed or projected climate hazards.

Farmers are resource constrained: they lack the financial capacity and knowledge of expected returns to adopt new practices. Making an economic argument for investments in climate smart practices and the present value of future benefits can be a determining factor in increasing adoption rates of the practices and for obtaining the necessary credit to finance them. From the initial set of climate smart practices potential “Best bet” options should be identified for scaling out. The costs and benefits of these practices can then be compared to a conventional – well managed – reference system. CBA refers to a systematic approach of identifying, valuing and comparing options to make decisions on whether or not to implement an investment given limited. CBAs are a common tool in the evaluation of investment opportunities and allocate scarce resources efficiently. Cost and benefits of CSC practices data can be collected from several sources. Household surveys, expert panels, focus group discussions or secondary data that is amended with key informant data can be useful to estimate costs and benefits. CBA can then be employed to assess the farm-level economic impact of different CSC practices over a certain time horizon. The two most common indicators in CBA are Net Present Value (NPV) and Internal Rate of Return (IRR). However, we believe that CBA should also be understood as a tool to quantitatively capture barriers to adoption so that adequate incentives can be developed.

The existing policy and institutional framework can serve as a springboard as well as a barrier to CSC approaches. Projects must ensure that conflicting information and resources are not passed on to farmers. However, institutions can also be engaged, and policy developed, by showing the relation between current practices and CSC objectives, and how the CSC approach can help improve results. This required analyses of current projects of public and private institutions. CSA country profiles can be adapted to CSC to map stakeholders and review activities related to CSC.

Active efforts to scale out CSC practices require a multi-stakeholder approach becauses no single technology or scaling pathway may account for the diversity of decision environments of the actors involved. Together with organizational development, we suggest complementary scaling pathways for climate smart cocoa that respond to business incentives: Voluntary certification, carbon insetting, impact investing, sustainability branding. Certifiers act both as a verification body of sustainable practices and providers of training. Certifiers’ interest in climate adaptation is grounded on the premise that the final consumer is willing to pay a premium for certified products. By facilitating access to certification to those smallholders that are organic by default, certifiers would be able to provide economic incentives and innovative training to a large segment on farmers. Management practices such as shade use and reforestation influence have the double benefit of both reducing climate vulnerability and increasing carbon stocks in cocoa. In some cases, these synergies can be used to incentivize and subsidize adaptation actions through carbon accounting for mitigation actions. Carbon insetting offers to offset GHG emission in the coffee supply chain or processes. Trading companies could offset their GHG foot print by investing in carbon sequestering activities at farmer level that at the same time support the adaptation of farmers to progressive climate change. Financing possibilities for these joint adaptation mitigation activities can arise through carbon offsetting, carbon insetting, and carbon footprint reductions. The interest of companies to invest in CSC depends on their business model and the scale of their operations. Companies that work closely with farmers tend to not separate efforts into climate or sustainability efforts, but rather focus on holistic programs to increase productivity and make cocoa farming attractive. Large brands source large quantities and choose to invest in climate change activities out of a volumes based business case. “Front-runner” companies are concerned about supply volumes, but in addition generate value from brand reputation. Last, the value of smaller brands is often based on social and environmental reputation. Therefore, the latter have a higher capacity to develop solutions in direct contact with their smallholder base than the larger companies. They can therefore act as catalysts to innovate CSC approaches that can be mainstreamed by the more risk-adverse large brands with their large constituencies to achieve CSC adoption at scale. Social investment funds seek to maximize positive social and environmental effects of investments by providing finance for rural small businesses for both short and long term investments. Working with producer organizations rather than individual farmers may provide efficient incentives for adoption of financeable CSC. However, currently incentive investors are limited in their constituencies.

Our risk assessment tool can help you to develop an initial assessment of cocoa specific climatic changes. We provide some key data that provides a quantitative backdrop to the participatory development of locally adapted CSC interventions.

Step 1) Global agro-climatic zones for cocoa production

Embed the intervention region in the global context. Globally, cocoa is produced agro-climatic zones that have important differences in their climatic characteristics. Interventions to address risks in one zone may be useful within the same zone, but scaling beyond the agro-climatic zone should be evaluated with care.

Step 2) Future distribution of agro-climatic zones for cocoa

How will this context change in the future? We developed a most likely future scenario for the distribution of the agro-climatic zones for cocoa. Some regions may stay similar, while others may face profound changes. This step gives some indication of this. An unchanged agro-climatic zone makes it more likely that currently used climate risk management strategies can be successful in the future as well. Changing climate zones may require more comprehensive measures (see also Step 3). In the future we may also see the emergence of novel climates that don’t have a homolog under historic climate. This is reflected in our zoning in the increasing distribution of “Not classified” zones. These areas may remain suitable but are not necessarily similar to the climates that were observed in the past due to unknown temperature and precipitation combinations. Disclaimer: there is large uncertainty about the future distribution of precipitation, which is of high importance for cocoa production. Therefore this assessment should always be contextualized with locally observed trends (Step 4).

Step 3) Degree of change

To define a top-level strategy it can be useful to make the degree of change explicit. Regions that may become unsuitable for cocoa will need a different intervention strategy than regions where the agro-climatic zone remains unchanged. We differentiate 5 different recommendation domains for adaptation strategies: Transformation, systemic resilience, systemic change, incremental adaptation and expansion. Each of these zones will require different types of interventions:

Transformation zones in the future share characteristics of unsuitable climates. Adaptation of cocoa to such conditions maybe technically challenging or costly so that a sustainable transformation of cocoa production to alternative agro-forestry systems may be preferential. At the least, some degree of diversification, varieties with abiotic stress tolerance and similar interventions should be considered.

Systemic resilience zones will likely remain suitable in the future but there is high disagreement between climate models about future outcomes. It is therefore insufficient to assume unchanged or specific future climatic conditions. Interventions should prepare producers to a wide range of possible futures. For example, multi-variety plantations instead of choosing a single “best” variety, soil preservation to increase plant health or water management. In addition, diversification, insurance schemes and climate services should be implemented.

Systemic change zones will likely shift from one agro-climatic zone to another with some degree of agreement between climate models. Such changes put the future success of current cultivation practices in doubt. Changes in pest and disease threats, more humid or drier conditions may require a readjustment of the system. Interventions could include replanting with new varieties, a change from no shade to shade or similar deep changes. In addition, climate services and incentive schemes should support the implementation.

Incremental change zones will remain within the same agro-climatic zone. This however, does not imply that there will not be climatic changes that require changes. Increasing temperatures may change humidity or pest and disease threats. However, known good agricultural practices are likely useful interventions to confront such threats. As cultivation in such regions may remain relatively profitable compared to higher risk zones, we expect a higher risk of cocoa driven deforestation in the incremental change zone. This should be monitored.

Expansion zones are areas that previously appeared unattractive for cocoa production. In such regions cocoa could be introduced as an alternative where appropriate. Many authors claim that cocoa production is more sustainable than livestock, and in such cases cocoa could play a positive role towards more sustainable landscapes. Deforestation driven by cocoa should be monitored.

Step 4) Observed trends in cocoa regions

Climate change may already be manifest in observed climatic trends. Global climate models agree about changes in temperature but may disagree about precipitation. In such cases it may be helpful to understand more about the observed changes of the climate over the last 30 years. For a wide range of agro-climatic variables we show annual trends where they were significant. This step can tell you, for example, if the mean trend for dry season precipitation was positive or negative. Doing so increases confidence when planning interventions and may help to align with local perceptions of change to increase adoption. Of course, in tropical regions climate variability is high and the climate signal may not be significant, on the other hand past changes may have local causes or may not be extrapolated in the future. Hence, it is important to also consider the projections.

Step 5) Current and future climate graph

Gives you the ability to download a climate graph for a global grid cell of interest. It shows the historic distribution of precipitation and also shows the modeled future projections. You could use this for example to build and adapt cropping calendars in intervention zones, or validate observed trends from Step 4).

Step 6) Avoid deforestation

Do no harm is the key principle for climate smart cocoa. Cocoa driven deforestation should be avoided to mitigate future climate change. Land use conversion driven by smallholders is a major GHG source and a big liability in the carbon footprint of cocoa production. CIAT’s Terra-I is a near real time monitoring system of habitat loss. Its data can be used to monitor recent tree cover loss in intervention regions. This information should be used to develop and monitor zero-deforestation initiatives.