Zambia Climate-Smart Agriculture Investment Plan.

The Zambia Climate-Smart Agriculture Investment Plan (CSAIP) is an instrument with a multi-sectoral approach which aims to address climate change challenges and therefore support sustainable agriculture. The overarching goals of the CSAIP) are to identify and prioritize key policy actions, investments and knowledge gaps and build on existing policies, strategies, and lessons learned through engagement with the agriculture sector to assess how CSA investment can strengthen climate change adaptation and mitigation initiatives and prioritize investments that promise cost-effective CSA approaches to achieving overall sector goals.
The document seeks to make agriculture more productive and sustainable. Climate-smart agriculture practices refer to minimum soil disturbance, residue retention, crop rotation, crop diversification, livestock diversification.
In addition the instrument seeks to enable more inclusive and efficient agricultural systems Special attention is given to security of land tenure, which is considered to be a key driver of on-farm investment. Capacity building and agricultural extension services are considered key for agricultural development as well. Delivery mechanisms and their potential to address enabling environment constraints include, among others: business partnerships with rural communities; participatory integrated landscape management approach; farmer field school, community-based learning and technology adoption; gender sensitive supply chains (reducing barriers for women to access finance, to receive adequate training and to enter markets).
The document aims to increase resilience of livelihoods to disasters, and explicitly recognizes the strong linkage existing between agriculture and climate change Therefore it outlines various strategies to operationalize climate commitments toward a productive, resilient, and low-emissions agriculture sector.