https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6402-7179
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ABSTRACT
The need to define and implement adaptation solutions has emerged since the early 1990s when the IPCC started assessing the changes, causes, potential impacts and responses to climate change. Yet, limited information exists on the context-specific effectiveness of local adaptation of agronomic practices. The Near East and North Africa (NENA) region is one of the world’s regions with the lowest per capita natural resources availability and one of the most vulnerable to climate change. For these reasons, there is an urgent need to improve the development and implementation of adaptation plans and actions to cope with climate change. This research implements the systematic review (SR) methodology to assess the scientific literature in adopting climate change adaptation practices for agriculture at the farm level in the NENA region. Results highlight a significant knowledge gap in adaptation in the region and recommend intensifying targeted research and funding to cope with urgent regional climate risks to rural and agricultural livelihoods.
Key policy insights:
A limited number of studies assess the costs and benefits of climate change adaptation options for the agricultural sector in the NENA region, with a majority of these published in the last ten years.
Adapting crop management techniques to climate risks generates a net improvement in Near East and North Africa yields. However, adaptation responses aiming to increase agrosystems resilience show context-specific effectiveness.
Water management options, which benefit crop water use efficiency to different extents, present relatively high implementation costs.
Integrated management options show the potential to achieve additional multidimensional benefits. Still, well-designed long-term experiments are required to evaluate these practices in the different farming systems under present and projected climate conditions.
An urgent need is to promote adaptation research for the various farming systems in the NENA region and to estimate the cost of adaptation measures to guarantee farmer incomes and food security in the face of climate change.
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the funding of staff time by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) as part of the ‘Economic impacts of climate change on agriculture and the cost of adaptation in Near East and North Africa Region’, contract No. GF.RNEGD.RA2010200RIN2.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
2 Where the sub-categories include (i) ecosystem-based adaptation, engineering and built environment, service and technological options, (ii) behavioural, informational and educational options, and (iii) economic options, government policies and programmes, law and regulations.
3 Water use efficiency (WUE): refers to the ratio of water used in plant metabolism to water lost by the plant through transpiration (Briggs & Shantz, Citation1913). Two types of water-use efficiency are referred to most frequently: photosynthetic water-use efficiency (also called instantaneous water-use efficiency) and productive water-use efficiency (also called integrated water-use efficiency).
4 Deficit Irrigation (DI), according to English (Citation1990), is the application of water below the ET requirements, reducing irrigation supply under those needed to meet maximum ET.
5 Supplemental Irrigation (SI): is defined as the addition of limited amounts of water to essentially rainfed crops to improve and stabilize yields when rainfall fails to provide sufficient moisture for normal plant growth (Oweis & Hachum, Citation2012).