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Integrated assessment of sustainable agricultural practices to enhance climate resilience in Morogoro, Tanzania

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Abstract

Climate change is an unprecedented global threat to fundamental life-supporting systems and people’s livelihoods and is expected to aggravate development challenges. Subsistence-oriented smallholder farmers of developing regions, such as those in sub-Saharan Africa, are highly vulnerable to these changes given their lower adaptive capacity. In this context, building a climate-resilient agricultural society is an essential requirement to protect livelihoods. Hence, there is a need for spreading the climate-resilient sustainable agricultural (CRSA) practices by replicating the proven ones to larger areas (scaling-up). Fostering widespread adoption of such practices needs consideration of their social, ecological, economic, and institutional appropriateness in target areas. This article reports the application of a tool “ScalA” that generates information on a multitude of aspects and assesses the local suitability of CRSA practices among sub-Saharan smallholders. It also briefly presents other state-of-the-art tools that can be used for similar purposes. In the first case study, the tool is used to assess appropriateness of agroforestry, biochar application, and rainwater harvesting in Fulwe village of Morogoro, Tanzania, for enhancing resilience capacity. In another case study, the potential of fertilizer management is assessed for two different villages, i.e., Fulwe and Mlali. Analytically, appropriateness of interventions is assessed by the deviation of the actual factor constellation of the scaling-up process with an optimal constellation that will foster the wider adoption of the given practice.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Socioeconomics, Leibniz-Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Eberswalder Str. 84, 15374, Müncheberg, Germany

    Stefan Sieber, Srijna Jha, Amjath-Babu Tharayil Shereef, Goetz Uckert, Frieder Graef & Klaus Mueller

  2. Division of Resource Economics, Humboldt University, Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Wibke Crewett

  3. 4C Association, Adenauerallee 108, 53113, Bonn, Germany

    Franziska Bringe

  4. International Potato Center, Avenida La Molina 1895, Lima, Peru

    Severin Polreich

  5. Institute for Agricultural Social Science, University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany

    Tim Hycenth Ndah

Authors
  1. Stefan Sieber
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  2. Srijna Jha
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  3. Amjath-Babu Tharayil Shereef
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  4. Franziska Bringe
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  5. Wibke Crewett
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  6. Goetz Uckert
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  7. Severin Polreich
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  8. Tim Hycenth Ndah
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  9. Frieder Graef
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  10. Klaus Mueller
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Srijna Jha.

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Sieber, S., Jha, S., Tharayil Shereef, AB. et al. Integrated assessment of sustainable agricultural practices to enhance climate resilience in Morogoro, Tanzania. Reg Environ Change 15, 1281–1292 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-015-0810-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-015-0810-5

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