Contested landscapes: the global political economy of climate-smart agriculture

Abstract

Analysing key initiatives in the area of climate-smart agriculture and the politics which surround them, this paper identifies the dominant discourses shaping the debate through a discussion of discursive sites of power and by mapping the emerging ‘regime complex’ of institutional power that operates at the interface of the climate and agrifood system. This is connected to forms of material power that derive from control over production, finance and technology in the neoliberal food regime by transnational capital. Such an analysis has important implications for which solutions are promoted as part of climate-smart agriculture and which actors are likely to benefit from the flows of technology, finance and institutional support that are mobilised in the struggle to define a viable global agrifood system in a warming world.

Keywords:

• climate-smart agriculture
• food regime
• regime complex
• political economy
• climate change

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support for this research from the Sussex Sustainability Research Programme, and thank the three reviewers and the editors for helpful feedback on an earlier version of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Peter Newell http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5371-7668

Notes

1 A relevant example of this is a GACSA side event held on 8th November 2016 in Africa Pavillion, entitled ‘Climate-Smart Agriculture, Agroecology and Food Security: Lessons Learned from Research and Community Development Projects in Africa’.

2 For full list of partnerships, see https://ccafs.cgiar.org/partners

3 International Agricultural Research Cooperation for Climate Change – Follow-up side event of G7 Niigata Agriculture Ministers, Marrakesh COP 2016.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Sussex Sustainability Research Programme [grant number SSRP2016-005].

Notes on contributors

Peter Newell

Peter Newell is a professor of international relations at the University of Sussex. His research currently focusses on the global political economy of climate change and energy, while earlier work explored the political economy of agricultural biotechnology. He is author or co-author of the books Climate for Change, Governing Climate Change, Climate Capitalism and Globalization and the Environment.

Olivia Taylor

Olivia Taylor is a research assistant at the University of Sussex. She holds a BA in geography from the University of Cambridge and an MA in environment, development and policy from the University of Sussex. She has particular interests in political ecology and the political economy of the environment, especially with regard to climate change and adaptation. Email: [email protected]