At COP28 countries recognized that unprecedented adverse climate impacts are increasingly threatening the resilience of agriculture and food systems and ability to produce and access food in the prevailing scenario of mounting hunger, malnutrition, and economic stresses.

The colonial legacy of irrigated agriculture in Egypt continues to reinforce food security and poverty. Marginalized tenant farmers along the tail end of Drain 7 in Kafr El Sheikh face challenges of polluted, unreliable irrigation water, low crop productivity, income and food insecurity, and poor health.
Low value agriculture work is increasingly performed by marginalized women, whose work and time is undervalued and taken for granted.

Pakistan is highly dependent on irrigated agriculture for employment, income generation and food security—around 90 percent of all food production relies on either surface or groundwater irrigation. The growing dependence of agriculture but also industries and the drinking water sector on groundwater has led to the overexploitation of groundwater resources and, in some areas, to the deterioration of groundwater quality. Fiscal incentives for solarization of irrigation/drinking water pumps are likely to further increase water withdrawals and make water governance more complex.

Until the past half-century, all agriculture and land management was framed by local institutions strong in social capital. But neoliberal forms of development came to undermine existing structures, thus reducing sustainability and equity. The past 20 years, though, have seen the deliberate establishment of more than 8 million new social groups across the world. This restructuring and growth of rural social capital within specific territories is leading to increased productivity of agricultural and land management systems, with particular benefits for those previously excluded.

The Bangladesh polder zones cover 1.2 million hectares of agricultural land and are home to around eight million people with women playing a critical role in agriculture and food systems. With limited access to and control over productive resources and incomes, women are disproportionately vulnerable to climatic risks. Their ability to make important decisions can have positive outcomes on the governance of natural resources, agricultural productivity, and livelihoods.

Burundi’s population has been expanding
far faster than its economy. And while the
agriculture sector contributes around 40%
of GDP and to over 95% of food supplies,
high pressure on land is leading to soil
fertility depletion, eroding the country’s
capacity to ramp up food production for a
growing population.
The Flagship project: “Improving food
security, nutrition, incomes, natural
resource base and gender equity for better
livelihoods of smallholder households in
sub-Saharan Africa” between 2015 and

County Climate Risk Profiles are a key tool to guide climate smart agriculture (CSA) investments and priorities at the county level in Kenya. These documents provide analyses of the underlying causes of vulnerability and on-going and potential climate change adaptation strategies. They also provide a snapshot of the enabling environment for building resilience by providing a synthesis of the policy, institutional and governance context.

Although progress has been made in promoting gender equality in governments; gender and intersectional inequalities in national agrifood and climate policies are rarely meaningfully considered neither systematically addressed (Acosta et al.; 2019, 2020). The nexus between climate, agrifood and gender issues is relevant. Climate and gender policies often follow a top-down approach without integrating women’s and men’s knowledge, vulnerabilities and demands (Howland and Le Coq, 2022) and do not address structural causes of gender and intersectional inequalities (Huyer et al., 2020).

India faces crucial challenges of food security and sustainability. The country needs to grow a significantly higher quantity and quality of food to provide adequate nourishment to a population that is expected to increase to 1.6 billion by 2050. Furthermore, its environmental factors are already severely stressed. For instance, India has only 4% of the world’s freshwater resources but has 17% of the global population. Given the nature of agriculture in India which relies heavily on groundwater, the country is facing severe depletion in a large majority of its aquifers.

Water management in Egypt presents unique challenges. Being waterscarce, the country needs to use its limited freshwater reserves efficiently and effectively, particularly for irrigation, which accounts for over 70% of the total freshwater availability. Egypt has a network of irrigation canals and water-reuse drains that were built since the introduction of cotton cultivation in the colonial era to enable agricultural drainage and the reuse of water for irrigation. This facilitated expansion of the cultivated area with a view to improving food security and income.

Digitalization is transforming existing agricultural business processes and services and enabling new means to deploy innovative services and products at scale. At the core of these services and innovations is open data. In India, Central and State Governments, academic, research institutions, and the private sector have done critical work in conceptualizing different approaches and aspects of an AgriStack to digitally transform agriculture.