As resource users interact and impose externalities onto each other, institutions are needed to coordinate resource use, create trust, and provide incentives for sustainable management. Coordinated collective action can play a key role in enabling communities to manage natural resource commons more sustainably. But when such collective action is not present, what can be done to foster it? We contribute to the understanding of how experiential learning through games can affect behavioral change, potentially leading to more sustainable commons management.

The Africa Union Commission (AUC) drafted an African Fertilizer and Soil Health Action Plan (AFSH) and a Soil Initiative for Africa (SIA) for launching at the Africa Fertilizer summit in June 2023. The AFSH is a ten-year (2023-2033) plan to provide guidance on integrated soil fertility maintenance, including the correct use of fertilizer to ensure soil health in Africa. The SIA is a practical initiative to develop an African system for soil management and to implement actions at the continental, sub-regional, and country levels.

Identifying the biophysical factors that affect the performance of irrigated crops in semi-arid conditions is pivotal to the success of profitable and sustainable agriculture under variable climate conditions. In this study, soil physical and chemical variables and plots characteristics were used through linear mixed and random forestbased modeling to evaluate the determinants of actual evapotranspiration (ETa) and crop water productivity (CWP) in rice in the Kou Valley irrigated scheme in Burkina Faso.

Poster 1: This poster describes the links between improving soil health and climate-smart agriculture (CSA). It illustrates the three pillars of CSA and gives examples of practices under each which either involve improved soil management activities or contribute to enhanced soil health.

The potential of big data capabilities to transform and understand global agricultural and biological systems often relies on data from different sources that must be considered together or aggregated to provide insights. The value of data is however not only in its collection and storage, but largely in its re-use.

Governments in countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are keen to expand irrigation to improve food security and are placing particular emphasis on adoption and use of smallholder private groundwater irrigation. Yet private irrigation is a multi-stage technology, the adoption of which is affected by fiscal support and extension services offered on different investment stages but also by uncertainties around actions that need to be undertaken in these stages.

Rice production in Asia and Africa has faced labor shortages and climate change issues such as unanticipated droughts and
floods, causing unstable yields and a high risk of crop losses. In addition, low farming efficiency, high carbon footprint,
and high postharvest losses are the major constraints in rice production. Low farming efficiency (high energy and
labor cost and agronomic input use) is mainly caused by poor land consolidation, lack of precision land leveling, crop

This study analyzes the impact of a component of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) technology—Striga-resistant maize (SRM) varieties and mineral fertilizer—on maize yield and food security using two rounds of panel data in Ghana. The study employs a multinomial endogenous switching regression model and finds that joint adoption of SRM varieties and mineral fertilizer increased maize yield by 872 kg/ha, food consumption scores by 17, and consumption per adult equivalent unit by 38 kg/ha. The positive impact of maize yield is high among adopters of multiple CSA technologies.

India is an agriculturally based nation, and a significant portion of its
livestock sector is controlled by women. Women have a lot of options to
increase their income by working in the livestock sector. Livestock
provides meat, milk, eggs, and other food products, which are generally
considered key assets for rural livelihood, that are dietary staples for
population. For the women's livelihood and to help ensure the food security
of the household, livestock is a crucial non-land productive asset. The tiny,

In multifunctional landscapes, expanding economic activities jeopardise the integrity of biodiverse ecosystems, generating conservation-development trade-offs that require multi-stakeholder dialogue and tools to negotiate conflicting objectives. Despite the rich literature on participatory mapping and other tools to reveal different stakeholder perspectives, there is limited evidence on the application of such tools in landscape-scale negotiations.

Agrarian change affects the supply and demand of ecosystem services (ES) by reducing the extent of natural ecosystems. Agricultural intensification can lead to changes in land covers and livelihood opportunities and it remains unclear how such changes align or misalign with the desires of local communities.

Climate extreme events have been observed more frequently since the 1970s throughout Ethiopia, which adversely affects the socio-economic development of the country, as its economy depends on agriculture, which, in turn, relies heavily on annual and seasonal rainfall. Climate extremes studies conducted in Ethiopia are mainly limited to a specific location or watershed, making it difficult to have insights at the national level. The present study thus aims to examine the observed climate extreme events in Ethiopia at both station and agro-ecological zone (AEZ) levels.