Climate Smart Agriculture 2015 Global Science Conference

16 March – 18 March 2015. Montpellier, France. CSA 2015 was the third international conference in a successful series on Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) that was launched by Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands, in 2011. It then moved to the University of California, Davis, USA in 2013. Over these four years, the concept of climate-smart agriculture has spread worldwide. It is now attracting the attention of many scientists, policy makers, developers, farmers, as well as other stakeholders including the public. There were some 754 participants from 75 countries to attend this conference.

• The Montpellier Statement is available here 
• Full program online
• All abstracts available here
• Professor Sir Gordon Conway's presentation at CSA2015 "We are all in the same boat: food production and food security under threat by climate change" is available here

According to the FAO, Climate smart agriculture (CSA) is a way to achieve short and long term agricultural development priorities in the face of climate change and serve as an integrator to other development priorities. It seeks to support countries and other actors in securing the necessary policy, technical and financial conditions to enable them to:

• Ensure sustainable and equitable increases in agricultural productivity and incomes;
• Improve the resilience of food systems and farming livelihoods; and
• Contribute to the reduction and/or removal of greenhouse gas emissions associated with agriculture (including the relationship between agriculture and ecosystems), wherever possible.

The 3rd Global Science Conference on Climate-Smart Agriculture will lead to two key international scientific events to be organized in France. The first, "Our Common Future under Climate Change," to be held at UNESCO in Paris from the 7th to 10th, July 2015, will address all aspects of climate change. The second key event is the 2015 Climate Conference (21st session of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC), which will be held from November 30th to December 11th at Paris-Le Bourget.

The 3rd global Science Conference on Climate-Smart Agriculture was organized by Cirad, Inra, IRD and Agropolis International in close partnership with CGIAR, the University of Wageningen, the University of California (Davis) and FAO. The conference was financially supported by the French Ministry of Agriculture, Agrifood and Forestry, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Department for International Development, the region of Languedoc-Roussillon, the Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole, LabEx Agro and CeMEB.

Can citizen science accelerate climate adaptation by poor farming households? from Bioversity International

Barriers to adoption: policy & institutional arrangements to support CSA from Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Climate Smart Agriculture: Panacea, Propaganda or Paradigm Shift? from World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF)

Targeting CSA in S. Tanzania from World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF)

Published on 19 Mar 2015 Farming First went behind the scenes at the Third Global Science Conference on Climate Smart Agriculture, to talk to the winners of the Louis Malassis international Scientific Prize, and the inaugural Olam Prize for Innovation in Food Security.