Lesotho Climate-Smart Agriculture Investment Plan.

The Climate-Smart Agriculture Investment Plan (CSAIP) for Lesotho aims to transform the country’s agricultural sector into a productive, climate-resilient, and low-carbon system. Key challenges addressed include frequent droughts, soil degradation, low crop yields, heavy reliance on food imports, etc.
The CSAIP proposes two alternative investment pathways for scaling up Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) in Lesotho. The first is the commercialization pathway, which entails focusing on commodities for which the country has distinct comparative advantage, such as horticulture, potatoes, and aquaculture; developing the country’s irrigation to its full potential; and developing linkages that connect smallholders to export and domestic markets. The second pathway is the resilient landscape pathway which combines modern scientific knowledge with the Machobane farming system (MFS) that is highly adapted and resilient to climate change.
The policy actions to support effective scaling up of CSA are identified, including: Realigning agricultural support to promote CSA; Strengthening agricultural research and extension; Building capacity to access climate finance; etc. The critical areas that need capacity development for climate finance include identifying funding gaps and needs; assessing public and private financing options; developing payment for ecosystem services programs that offer incentives to farmers in exchange for sustainably managing the land to provide ecological services such as carbon sequestration; and developing financially viable opportunities for effective private sector engagement.