Articulating policy mixes across scales & sectors to address adaptation challenges in vulnerable tropical agricultural landscapes – ARTIMIX

During the last 2 decades, a growing literature has underlined potential effects of Climate Change (CC) on economic development, environment and wellbeing of population especially in tropical rural areas. While contributing to CC, agriculture is also strongly affected by CC and climate variability. Hence adaptation to CC has become a stringent challenge in vulnerable agricultural tropical landscape.
To face this challenge, concepts to tackle CC issues in agriculture have been proposed, CC national adaptation policies framework have been formulated, and local initiatives have been flourishing. However, the lack of articulation between interpretations of concepts, policy design, levels and sectors in the implementation of policies, and farmers’ situation and practices may lead to maladaptation processes.
The objective of ARTIMIX project is to determine the conditions of successful design and implementation of articulated adaptation to CC policy mixes in order to foster ecological transition in tropical vulnerable agricultural landscapes. For this purpose, the project will 1) analyze the concepts proposed to tackle adaptation issue in agriculture (Agro-ecology, Climate Smart Agriculture, Ecosystem Based Adaptation) and the way they are integrated in policies; 2) Identify the enabling and limiting factors for effective implementation of CC adaptation policies, considering their coordination and interactions with sectorial policies; 3) Characterize how current policy mix are affecting farmers’ practices and their related environmental, technical-economic and social outcomes.
The ARTIMIX will be implemented by a multidisciplinary team encompassing policy scientists, economists, sociologists, agronomists, animal and environmental scientists. It will be implemented in Ultramarine French territories (Guadeloupe and Martinique), Brazil and Colombia.
The innovation of the ARTIMIX project is twofold. First, it will develop and test an integrated and multilevel approach to address the different phases of policy cycle (design, implementation, effects) and the different levels from national to farmer level with emphases on the local arena. Second, it will support mainstreaming of CC adaptation in local actors and policies that are lagging in Martinique and Guadeloupe, mobilizing experience from Latin American countries (Colombia and Brazil) that are developing policies to tackle similar issues regarding CC adaptation.
The expected overall outcomes of ARTIMIX is to contribute to the design or adjustment of CC adaptation policy mix that takes into account farmers’ strategy and local actors’ agenda. Specific scientific results will encompass: 1) A characterization of convergence and divergence between concepts to tackle CC adaptation and an assessment of their integration in the design of CC adaptation policy frameworks, 2) An identification of the factors affecting the implementation of the adaptation to CC policies and an analysis of synergies and trade-offs between instruments aiming to enhance farmers’ CC adaptation capacities; 3) An assessment of practices promoted by policies regarding their ability to increase farmers’ CC adaptation capacity and their socio-economic and environmental outcomes.
In addition to publications and diffusion in academics and large audience, the results will be shared with stakeholders in the research sites through workshops. They will enable to define a set of specific recommendations: 1) for a better integration of concepts in the design of context-specific coherent policy mix aiming to strengthen farmers’ adaptation capacities; 2) for improving articulation among actors in implementation of relevant policy mix regarding local conditions; 3) for supporting farmers’ adoption of practices improving their adaptation capacity to face CC.