Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an integrated approach of agriculture compatible with climate change (rise in average temperatures, more frequent extreme events, etc.). The CSA objectives are to promote mitigation and adaptation to these disruptions, while ensuring global food security.

In a context of climate change, food supply capacities are disrupted and vulnerable. The first objective is to increase agricultural productivity in a sustainable way. The idea is to adapt systems in order to reduce their short-term risk sensitivity, while improving their resilience to cope with long-term disruption. It is also a matter of mitigating climate change. To do so, CSA induces both a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and a carbon sequestration improvement in soil and biomass.

To reach CSA goals, two agroecological scales must be taken into account, promoting the ecological, economic and social territory potentials. A local approach will bring technical and scientific solutions to agricultural systems. The development of agroforestry, soil management and carbon sinks are all potentially technical mitigation solutions. Agroecological practices, such as crop diversification and conservation agriculture, are ways of adapting in order to limit erosion and maximize the use of ecosystem services. It is also possible to promote the selection of tolerant varieties that will resist to more frequent water stress. From an overall point of view, it is fundamental to adopt an ecosystem approach. Cross-sector coordinations at a territorial level are necessary to promote sustainable management of natural resources. It will also be important to rethink production, financing and consumption patterns. This implies a synergy between private and public funding, a coherence between agricultural and food security policies and finally a common goal to solve the climate change problem.