Agrarian Systems and Climate Change – Journeys of adaptation in the Global South

This book examines the link between global change and impacts and adaptation at the local level, combining a systemic approach and connecting different scales of analysis. It unravels the complex ties between the scenarios developed at global, continental, and regional scales of analysis and farmers' concrete experiences, lived at the territorial level. In addition to this great discrepancy in terms of scales of analysis and understanding of processes, there is a need to relate the multi-generational scale of possible climatic changes to that of agricultural practices carried out on the agricultural season level.

Based on the detailed study and comparison of a dozen contrasting local situations in sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia, the authors highlight the processes and trajectories which explain the high exposure to the hazards of different groups of farmers, as well as their unequal capacity to adapt. They explain the causes of this vulnerability and illustrate the weight of past and current choices in terms of agricultural, environmental and trade policies. Finally, they present the adjustment modalities and the past and current transformations of peasant practices moving towards a reduction in exposure to hazards, a reduction in vulnerability, and better adaptation to global changes: climate change, demographic growth, increased competition for access to resources, changes in relative prices and market fluctuations, deregulation and decline in public support, etc. In conclusion, they outline possible paths in terms of adaptation and proposals for political measures to support producers.

Agro-economist and geographer, Hubert Cochet specializes in agrarian systems and their evolution, as well as the study of the impact of development policies and projects on their dynamics. He first worked in Mexico from 1984 to 1989 (INA-PG/IRD doctoral thesis in Comparative Agriculture), before devoting his work to the Andean countries and sub-Saharan Africa (Burundi where he stayed from 1990 to 1993, then Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, Guinea and Sierra Leone) and southern (South Africa), then to Ukraine. He has been authorized to direct research since 2000 in human, economic and regional geography (Paris X Nanterre University).He is now Professor of Comparative Agriculture at AgroParisTech where he works as a teacher-researcher in the Comparative Agriculture and Agricultural Development Training and Research Unit. His current work focuses in particular on the comparative approach of agrarian dynamics in several countries of the North and the South in connection with the land issue and that of "production models" firm agriculture versus family agriculture.

After around fifteen years designing, implementing and evaluating rural development projects in Laos (1991-2007), Olivier Ducourtieux oriented his professional activities towards higher education and research from 2008. Since then, his research focuses on the one hand on the relations between the State and the peasants, in particular the mountain minorities practicing agriculture exposed in the media (slash and burn, poppy, etc.), and on the other hand on the historical construction of the discourses and development and environmental policies that underpin these relationships. In the mountains of South-East Asia, his research demonstrates that the acceleration of deforestation is not the result of populations of forest clearers. Imposing the rapid abandonment of forestry agriculture amounts to making farmers produce unpaid environmental goods in a context of liberalization and international opening of markets. The clearers then find themselves in competition with producers from other countries who are not subject to such environmental constraints, while the freed forest areas become accessible to other agents for accelerated deforestation (mining extraction, silvicultural exploitation, monospecific industrial plantations)., urban sprawl, etc.). He has been involved since 2012 in research funded by AFD, interested in better understanding the dynamics of transformation of rural societies on a local scale: multi-site studies in Guinea (2012) and Ghana (2011); monitoring the impact of the Green Morocco Plan (2014-2016); comparative study of the vulnerability and adaptation of agriculture in the South to climate change (2014-2017); research into the agriculture-deforestation link in Indochinese Asia (2017); research on the processes of socio-economic differentiation and access to land in ex-Soviet irrigated areas in Georgia (2021-2022).

Nadège Garambois has been an agro-economist and lecturer at AgroParisTech since 2011 within the Comparative Agriculture and Agricultural Development Training and Research Unit. His research deals with the study of agrarian dynamics and the evaluation of agricultural development policies and projects, in different regions of the world, in the North and in the South. For 15 years, his work has focused on the study of the development and evaluation of agro-ecological production systems in France. She is also interested in the links between agro-ecological transition and energy transition, through the prism of the comparative study in France and Germany of the development of agricultural methanisation. His work also focuses on the future of family farming in sub-Saharan Africa (Comoros, Guinea, PUBLICATIONSWorks