Mapping and Evidence Synthesis of Process Evaluations of Climate Adaptation in Food Production
Food security and environmental crises have become a major concern worldwide, particularly affecting vulnerable groups in the Global South. Small producers, such as farmers, fishers, agropastoralists, and pastoralists, must adapt their activities to adopt innovative, climate-smart practices to mitigate the harmful effects of climate change.
Climate change and extreme weather events undermine the effectiveness of food production interventions, creating a strong need to better understand successful approaches to climate adaptation.
AIR's Collaboration with the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation
AIR collaborated with the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) to synthesize evidence from process evaluations of climate-adaptive food production interventions. For this study, Norad commissioned AIR to conduct a systematic review of evidence from its key partners on how they were implementing climate adaptation in food production interventions.
The primary purpose of this study was to synthesize qualitative evidence from process evaluations, documenting the barriers and facilitators to successful implementation. The study specifically focused on the following:
- What was the extent, nature, and quality of the existing evidence on the implementation of climate adaptation in food production interventions undertaken by Norad’s food security partners?
- What types of issues did these evaluations aim to uncover, who were the target groups, and to what extent are indigenous groups and/or disadvantaged populations included?
- What worked and what did not work for successful implementation (including implementation fidelity) of the climate-adaptive food production interventions?
To answer these questions, the study team conducted a systematic database search, critical appraisal, mapping of identified process evaluations, and a synthesis of qualitative evidence that met quality inclusion criteria.
Phase I of the study—including database search, quality appraisals, and evidence mapping—was completed in March 2023. Our study team identified 73 studies—the large majority of which evaluated interventions in sub-Saharan Africa—that met the inclusion criteria. Most studies targeted small-scale farmers and focused on crop production, with more limited evidence from the fisheries/aquaculture and livestock sectors.
After we completed this synthesis, we applied the Confidence in the Evidence from Reviews of Qualitative research (GRADE-CERQual) approach to assess how much confidence to place in each of our findings.
