Palm oil is an important commodity contributing to livelihoods of many communities, GDP of governments and the achievement of several sustainable development goals (SDG) including no poverty, zero hunger, and decent work and economic growth. However, its cultivation and continuous expansion due to high and increasing demand has led to many negative effects and subsequent calls to make production sustainable. To this end, information is needed to understand the negative and positive impacts on both the environment and human wellbeing to respond appropriately.

The Sahel region holds both challenges and opportunities for smallholder agriculture/agropastoralism. Market opportunities for food producers in the region have improved due to population growth, urbanization, income growth, dietary diversification and higher output prices.

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.

Landscape restoration initiatives often have the potential to result in environmental gains, but the question of whether these gains are sustainable and how they are linked to other community needs (social, productivity and economic gains) remains unclear. We use the Sustainable Intensification Assessment Framework (SIAF) to demonstrate how environmental benefits are linked to productivity, environment, social, human, and economic components. Using the SIAF, the standardization of relevant indicators across multiple objectives provided a contextual representation of sustainability.

Forest and Landscape Restoration (FLR) is carried out with the objective of regaining ecological functions and enhancing human well-being through intervention in degrading ecosystems. However, uncertainties and risks related to FLR make it difficult to predict long-term outcomes and inform investment plans. We applied a Stochastic Impact Evaluation framework (SIE) to simulate returns on investment in the case of FLR interventions in a degraded dry Afromontane forest while accounting for uncertainties.

This Mali country Climate-Smart Agriculture profile provides a snapshot of a developing baseline created to initiate discussion, both within countries and globally, about entry points for investing in CSA at scale.

This document is part of a series of short papers on “The Future of X”, produced as part of foresight-related research supported by the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets, and edited by Keith Wiebe (IFPRI) and Steven Prager (Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT). These short papers are intended to provide a focused, forward-looking perspective on key issues to support discussion on food, land, and water systems transformation. We thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier draft.