The Strategizing of Policy Entrepreneurs towards the Global Alliance for Climate‐Smart Agriculture
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12547 |
| Author | Marijn Faling,Sylvia Karlsson‐Vinkhuyzen,Robbert Biesbroek |
| Published date | 01 September 2018 |
| Date | 01 September 2018 |
The Strategizing of Policy Entrepreneurs
towards the Global Alliance for Climate-Smart
Agriculture
Marijn Faling , Robbert Biesbroek and Sylvia Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen
Wageningen University & Research
Abstract
Global collaborations across level, domain, and sector boundaries are on the rise. This article analyses policy entrepreneurship
for the establishment of the Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture (GACSA), a global multi-actor collaboration to
address climate change and foster food security and development. We explore policy entrepreneurship as a process embed-
ded within specific contexts. To that end we focus on the strategizing process, consisting of conditions, activities, and implica-
tions. Through a congruence case study based on interviews, documents, survey, and observation we find that: (1)
accommodating a varied global community requires flexibility and adaptability from entrepreneurs towards a dynamic and
changing environment; (2) the variety of actors constituting GACSA compromises vigour of the collaboration, and confuses
the meaning of CSA; (3) whereas collective entrepreneurship is often depicted as joint operation of multiple actors, it might
also be characterized by conflicting activities and/or successive involvement; (4) policy entrepreneurship is useful to establish
collaborations, but its role is temporary. Entrepreneurs must therefore be sensitive to their potential obsoleteness and with-
draw at the right moment. Our results show that policy entrepreneurship is a useful lens to study global policy processes,
while providing guidelines to inspire and support practitioners to engage with global policy processes.
Policy Implications
•In a period characterized by complexity, policy entrepreneurs must be flexible and adaptive vis-
a-vis their environment, to
anticipate changing contextual circumstances.
•The umbrella term of climate-smart agriculture seems attractive to unite a variety of actors, but requires explicit and con-
tinuous consideration of contradictory interpretations to address conflicting viewpoints, interests and responsibilities.
•The promotion of climate-smart agriculture encompasses multiple and different instances of issue promotion and issue
framing, to introduce and sell the concept to different audiences.
•The role of policy entrepreneurs is often temporary, therefore they must be sensitive to their potential obsoleteness, and
know when to withdraw.
Population growth, ecological degradation, and climate
change are among the key factors threatening agricultural
production, development, and global food security (Brown
and Funk, 2008; Godfray et al., 2010). Agricultural outputs
need to increase to meet the rising demand for food. This
will, in turn, further enhance the burden placed on natural
resources, climate and environment. Simultaneously climate
change and environmental degradation are expected to
threaten agricultural production, thereby compromising food
security and sustainable development. Climate-smart agricul-
ture (CSA) has been introduced by the UN Food and Agri-
culture Organization (FAO) in 2010 to break this vicious
circle. CSA is an approach that claims the transformation of
agricultural systems to effectively address the adverse
impacts of climate change, increase resilience and agricul-
tural outputs, and mitigate greenhouse gases where feasi-
ble. The approach focuses on synergies and trade-offs
between agriculture, food security, climate change and
development. CSA interventions range from the rehabilitation
of irrigation systems to reduce water loss, expanding the
capacity of storage ponds to harvest rainwater, and introduc-
ing intercropping with drought-tolerant varieties to precision
farming or manure management. To realize CSA, proponents
advocate increased collaboration between a wide variety of
public, private and civil society actors from different policy
levels and domains (FAO, 2010; Lipper et al., 2014). In 2014,
the Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture (GACSA)
was created as multi-actor collaborative platform to share
knowledge, foster learning, and create a space for discussions
between different stakeholders on CSA. The alliance brings
together multinational corporations, governments, farmers
associations, NGOs, international and regional organizations,
as well as a variety of different research institutes.
This global multi-actor collaborative platform is illustrative
for a proliferation of policy processes that are no longer
confined to national governments but increasingly involve
©2018 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Global Policy (2018) 9:3 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12547
Global Policy Volume 9 . Issue 3 . September 2018
408
Research Article
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