CRP 1.1 was presented at the 4th Fund Council Meeting in April 2011. CRP1.1 targets the poor and highly vulnerable populations of the dry areas. It aims to develop technology, policy and institutional innovations to improve livelihoods, using an integrated systems approach. The program focuses on four strategic research themes (SRTs ) which cut across five focus regions. This CRP was approved with conditions at the meeting and subsequently received unconditional approval of inception phase & conditional approval of overall program & budget on Nov. 9, 2011.

The climate-smart agriculture (CSA) concept reflects
an ambition to improve the integration of agriculture
development and climate responsiveness. It aims to achieve
food security and broader development goals under a
changing climate and increasing food demand. CSA initiatives
sustainably increase productivity, enhance resilience, and
reduce/remove greenhouse gases (GHGs), and require
planning to address tradeoffs and synergies between these
three pillars: productivity, adaptation, and mitigation [1].

The climate-smart agriculture (CSA) concept reflects an ambition
to improve the integration of agriculture development and climate
responsiveness. It aims to achieve food security and broader
development goals under a changing climate and increasing food
demand. CSA initiatives sustainably increase productivity, enhance
resilience, and reduce/remove greenhouse gases (GHGs), and
require planning to address trade-offs and synergies between
these three pillars: productivity, adaptation, and mitigation [1].

The climate-smart agriculture (CSA) concept reflects an ambition
to improve the integration of agricultural development and climate
responsiveness. It aims to achieve food security and broader
development goals under a changing climate and increasing food
demand. CSA initiatives sustainably increase productivity, enhance
resilience, and reduce/remove greenhouse gases (GHGs); and
require planning to address trade-offs and synergies between
these three pillars: productivity, adaptation, and mitigation [1].

Soil and water conservation (SWC) practices like that of erosion control and soil fertility measures were commonly practiced in the semiarid region of southern Mali since the 1980s. The SWC practices were mainly meant to increase water availability in the subsurface, reduce farm water runoff and gully formation and improve nutrient content of the soil, thereby increasing crop yield. Despite such efforts to promote at scale SWC practices, the landscape of southern Mali is still affected by high rates of runoff and soil erosion and low crop yield in farmers’ fields.

In the last 40 years, large areas of the Mau forest, the largest contiguous tropical montane forest in East Africa, have been cleared for agriculture. To date, there are no empirical data on how this land use change affects carbon dioxide (CO2) fluxes from soil respiration and soil methane (CH4) fluxes. This study reports measured annual soil CO2 and CH4 fluxes from the native Mau forest and previously forested lands converted to smallholder grazing land, smallholder and commercial tea plantations and eucalyptus plan- tations.