A systematic scoping review and content analysis of policy recommendations for climate-resilient agriculture

ABSTRACT Climate-resilient agriculture (CRA) is among the top policy priorities for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in their food, agriculture, and forestry sectors. However, the strategies that have been adopted to date have failed to produce positive changes or alter climate change trajectories. Scientific evidence is crucial for evidence-based policy making in this arena and elsewhere. We undertake a scoping review to explore what is known from the existing scientific literature about the policy recommendations for CRA in ASEAN. We follow the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines for new systematic reviews. Furthermore, we conduct a content analysis to classify the policy recommendations into eight CRA policy categories and to investigate how the policies identified in the reviewed articles reinforce the climate resilience capacities (CRC) needed for CRA. The synthesis review is based on 47 papers. This research contributes to climate resilience literature, and explains how the results of this study could be applied in policy analysis to build CRC within the agricultural sector. The knowledge generated by this study can support policy design, and therefore support the building of an enabling environment for CRA for ASEAN and elsewhere. Key policy insights: Scientific literature on CRA typically recommends policies that support communication and knowledge sharing and advance research and technology development, often in combination with risk management- and/or environmental/climate support. There is insufficient evidence on actual policies enabling CRA. This result may also reflect a lack of research on some of the identified CRA policy categories, such as agricultural production support, investment support, infrastructural support, land use regulation and certification. This synthesis review identifies literature addressing policy capacity to achieve CRA goals. Adaptability and transformability are key dimensions of policy capacity enabling responsive actions to climate change, mainly via social learning, in-depth learning and research and technology development. Literature pays little attention to anticipation and robustness, facilitating proactive ex-ante initiatives and coping for climate change; we argue that these dimensions of capacity merit further research. This synthesis demonstrates key gaps in research and understanding of CRA and related policies targeting capacity building, followed by a need to raise awareness of the importance of such policies. It also points to the need to enable preparation for climate-related crisis planning, through use of anticipatory policies and tools, such as climate predictions to inform planning of robust prevention measures. Last but not least, the synthesis identifies that representation across the ASEAN countries and the type of agricultural systems in is unbalanced; research from Vietnam and Malesia and research on rice production or rice in combination with other crops or shrimp are over-represented. We argue that research on climate change adaptation for other important agricultural production systems, covering the remaining ASEAN countries, is needed to fill this gap.