Traditional pastoralism is a unique and resilient system for ensuring adaptation to climate change. This adaptation is particularly important to deal with a dynamic process of unpredictable climate variability and permanent human interactions in dryland ecosystems in Africa. It is considered of fundamental importance to ensure the application of innovative techniques and mechanisms to deal with these changes, and that these technologies are strategically integrated into community social structures and resource management value systems.

Desertification has increased in African drylands in recent decades, led by land use change, climatic variability and poor land management practices. People living in drylands in Africa are highly vulnerable to desertification and climate change, because of their impacts on a wide range of livelihood based resources. Desertification and climate change affect gender disproportionately, with women and youth being the most affected. Without implementation of adequate measures, climate change will exacerbate the vulnerability to desertification among dryland populations in Africa.

To achieve equitable sustainable agricultural intensification (SAI), it is essential to understand differential access and control over agricultural resources by women and youth, and to assess how intensification interacts with gendered and age-dependent relationships. Existing packages for assessing women’s empowerment in agriculture tend to be large-scale surveys that do not provide timely results, nor are they easily integrated into a gender-transformative process.

Climate change and its impact on agricultural production and productivity is a major factor of concern in the agricultural sector. Many indicators point to the significant depressing role that climate change has on the agricultural sector, spanning from production to marketing of the primary and secondary products. Women and youth comprise most of the rural population in the

Despite increasing sustainable agricultural intensification (SAI) investments, indicators for detecting gender and intergenerational inequities in SAI costs and benefits sharing often remain overgeneralized, theoretical, or locally irrelevant. We examine the relative value of, and how to, customize standard SAI indicators to detect such inequities in specific socio-cultural contexts to enhance data collection for evidence-based decision making in fostering gender/youth inclusive SAI.

This study uses a framework that provides ample space for local stakeholders to integrate their knowledge and experience in the assessment of the barriers, incentives mechanisms, and roles of institutions for scaling out locally relevant CSA interventions in the four rice-growing environments in Mali. The study found that the adoption levels of many CSA interventions have been low.

Rural entrepreneurship in the developing world has long been hailed as a powerful tool for promoting the socioeconomic integration of young people and the key to avoiding rural depopulation as well as ensuring these areas remain attractive places for rural youth. However, there have been no efforts to investigate the role of collective entrepreneurship in the creation and management of new businesses in Morocco.

Climate change has many facets, including changes in long-term trends in temperature and rainfall regimes, increased year-to-year variability, and frequency of extreme events. Agriculture is the most affected, particularly in Sahelian countries, due to a scarcity of productive resources. Transitioning towards more resilient food systems requires the adoption of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) interventions.

In the context of commercial agriculture in Vietnam, this study investigates rural youth livelihood aspirations through an analysis of young people’s value for family farming and an assessment of whether or not they foresee agriculture as their main occupation. Using an intra-household dataset of cassava farmers in Vietnam, the study shows that the majority of youth aspire to work in agriculture, which is contrary to the popular belief that young people are not interested in agriculture. We employ the framework of opportunity space and embedded aspirations to assess the

Starting from 2010, the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) scenarios team has led several future scenario-guided policy formulation processes under the FP1 Flagship Priorities and Policies for CSA. These scenario-based processes combined stakeholders’ workshops with quantitative modelling to guide planning for food and nutrition secure futures under changing climatic conditions. While earlier scenarios focused on the regional level, the scope have since expanded to encompass multiple regional and national policy development processes.

This working paper summarizes the findings of a portfolio review conducted to explore the gender and youth responsiveness of climate-smart agriculture technologies tested across climate-smart villages. The innovative and integrative aspect of the Climate-Smart Village (CSV) approach can provide useful insights into how to decrease the gender gap in the context of climate change.

Zambia’s youth are key development catalysts that have the potential to foster economic prosperity in their communities, when provided with adequate support. As a means to better support Zambia’s youth population, many recent interventions have focused on expanding youth’s access to quality education. However, despite obtaining a higher education, numerous recent university graduates remain unable to qualify for gainful employment opportunities due to their lack of work experience and/or underdevelopment of professional skills.