Shannon Green

This article is based on an essay I wrote for my Masters programme in 2023.

At COP26 Simeon Ehui, World Bank (‘the Bank’) Regional Director for Sustainable Development in Africa, opened the ‘Scaling Investment in Climate-Smart Agriculture Technologies in Africa’ panel discussion by framing the Bank’s view of Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) as three interconnected concepts; adaptation and resilience to climate impacts, reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and, increased production. These concepts were underlined by four cross-cutting themes common to discussions of CSA; the economic imperative of increasing production, private and public cooperation, the application of new technologies, and a significant focus on Africa. In this introduction Director Ehui expresses the dominant view of CSA among international institutions, governments and development organisations. However, beyond broad sweep themes there is a lack of specificity when it comes to defining what constitutes CSA and this absence of a clear definition has resulted in vastly different and contradictory approaches utilising the mantle of CSA.

By bringing modern, sustainable and agroecological practices under a shared strategic framework CSA has been diluted to the point of ambiguity and is therefore incapable of increasing productivity while lowering GHG emissions for three reasons. Firstly, by analysing the Bank’s CSA Investment Plans it is clear that the inconclusive framing of CSA allows critical funding and political space to be given to projects which are only slightly, if at all, differentiated to industrial agriculture in terms of GHGs. These projects often fail to fully address or worsen ecological, social or cultural impacts. Secondly, by reviewing the Bank’s public events and CSA communications, that a focus on Global South countries as primary centres of change for both adaptation and mitigation obscures the far greater contribution of Global North nations to the climate crisis and the structural and historical power imbalances that have created an unequitable and unsustainable agricultural system. Finally, that an over-reliance on technical approaches and solutions supports the continuation of harmful systems of extraction and exploitation and legitimises them under the rubric of ‘green’, ‘sustainable’ or ‘climate-smart’.

The Bank defines CSA as a three-pronged framework for agricultural development focusing on; adapting agriculture to changing climates, mitigating the impacts of climate shocks on agricultural production and increased overall efficiency of inputs with increased productivity. Beyond this there is little consensus among CSA advocates of the metrics and approaches associated with these pillars or whether all three must co-exist within projects in order for it to be accurately described as CSA. In a 2018 Bank report on CSA technologies six of the top ten “CSA Insights” called out the “diverse”, “context-specific” and “common-sense” nature of the majority of CSA technologies in such broad sweep categories as to render specificity impossible under Bank definitions. Critics argue that CSA is more of a “discursive” tool than a specific package of evidence-based agricultural, economic and social solutions, bringing together multiple agricultural approaches that are incompatible or contradictory.

This can be seen in the Bank’s CSA Investment Plans for Bangladesh and Cote D’Ivoire which promote organic and inorganic fertiliser use respectively. In Bangladesh the promotion of organic fertiliser is based on long-standing practices of local farmers who have adapted to their alluvial environment with the development of floating gardens. In Cote D’Ivoire’s plan there is no such acknowledgement of local expertise or farmer knowledge, or the structural solutions they are campaigning for in the country’s extensive cocoa industry. In Cote D’Ivoire inorganic fertilisers continue to access more investment in research and development than organic fertilisers despite available research showing organic fertilisers outperforming their inorganic counterparts. Similarly, one of the Bank’s most significant CSA partners, CGIAR, recommends both agroecological practices and genetic engineering despite the emphasis in agroecology on the biological integrity and rights of nature, and farmer or peasant owned land systems which are fundamentally at odds with genetic engineering and the economic and intellectual property framework surrounding it. Similarly the Bank’s support for CSA implementation in Argentina overemphasizes growth in yields and reductions in emissions at the expense of more ecologically sound methods, often generating pollution, contamination and deforestation all with their own downstream climate impacts.

The Bank argues that all of these approaches are needed to address mitigation, adaptation and productivity in a range of different contexts and that CSA is a viable strategy because it combines climate mitigation and food security approaches. However approaches that emphasise the ecological and environmental integration of agriculture consistently outperform input heavy and technology focused methods. Inorganic fertilisers are energy intensive when produced and release GHGs like nitrous oxide which is significantly more potent than carbon dioxide. Ammonia production for nitrogen fertilisers alone contributes over 1% of global GHG emissions. By promoting CSA under such broad terms, the Bank puts climate harmful agricultural technologies in the same space as climate mitigating agricultural technologies vying for the same slice of the funding pie. In 2022 the Bank disbursed 7.7 billion dollars on agriculture, fishing and forestry combined while seven billion went to energy and extractives alone. Within this ambiguous and highly technical framework CSA cannot increase production while decreasing GHG emissions because it lacks specificity enabling net climate harmful technologies to outcompete net positive technologies and encourages the replacement of established agroecological practices with ‘smarter’ technologies that support the “triple-win” even when there is an increase in outsourced or downstream emissions.

Place, Power and the Long-Lasting Legacy of Malthus

The ambiguity of CSA is a result of the core principles of the Bank. One of the two major Bretton Woods organisations the Bank is firmly rooted in the ideals of post-war neoliberalism and US hegemony. It was a significant funder of the Green Revolution, helped entrench the growth mindset into agricultural development and continues to drive a win-win approach to global development – identifying and implementing solutions to global challenges without sacrificing economic growth. CSA fits into this ideal because it allows for multi-national corporations and Global North countries to maintain their growth and accumulation-based models through agricultural input and technology production. The Bank consistently points to an urgent need to increase agricultural production, framing population growth as the principal challenge to be met and climate change as a disruptive force jeopardising production. The perspectives and policies of the Bank and other CSA advocates shape how nations and regions in the Global South implement agricultural programmes and policies, by-passing or degrading questions of land-reform, worker rights and local knowledge in favour of technological or financial fixes that increase dependence on the global food system.

The significant focus on Global South countries as targets for CSA places unsubstantiated burdens on those with the lowest GHG emissions while consistently placing a neo-Malthusian responsibility to adapt on Global South countries. The Bank works in 185 countries, over two-thirds of those outside of Africa, however nine out of ten of their CSA Investment Plans are for countries in Africa. Similarly key events run by the Bank, including those at COP summits, routinely focus solely on Global South countries often asking how urban centres and communities in those countries can reduce their GHG emissions while local farmers adapt to the impacts of a climate crisis primarily caused by consumption in the Global North. Their particular focus on Africa is significant, the Green Revolution was directed mostly towards Central and South America creating the input heavy industrialised agriculture that today contributes to one quarter of the world’s GHG emissions. CSA is central to Africa’s modern Green Revolution and as delivered by the World Bank bares many of the hallmarks of the original. This highlights the ongoing neo-colonial practice of agribusiness and powerful nations outsourcing industrial agriculture’s environmental and climate impacts to the Global South while extracting valuable land, material for agricultural input, labour and the outputs of agricultural production.

The Bank has a history of transferring land ownership from the Global South to the Global North and international investors for the purpose of intensively producing commodity crops such as wheat, soy and rice which may not support local diets and is grown specifically for export to wealthier nations. Not only does this reduce valuable fertile land available for countries the Bank claims are food insecure or in danger of becoming so, it also extracts the profit of that land from the local community to foreign investors and creates a new market for agricultural input brokers. Much of the Bank’s work on CSA in the Global South is focused on technological inputs, integration into capital markets and expansion of those markets. Here CSA is integrated into long standing global political processes generated by the economic and security imperative of the great powers. Food is a different kind of commodity and agriculture is not the same as industrial or service economic activities. The Bank’s approach with CSA is to view agriculture through the same productivist lens as it views mining and other extractive industries without acknowledgement of the intrinsic cultural and social differences of food production. Here CSA is constrained within the economic system and historical processes which drive GHG emissions and the climate crisis. While that system has shown itself capable of increasing production it is so far incapable of doing so while decreasing GHG emissions.

Green Colonialism: Extractive Industries and CSA

CSA approaches often require increased inputs, directly (e.g., through pesticides) and indirectly (e.g., through materials needed for CSA technology). As with land ownership a focus on input driven production exposes local agriculture to economic extraction via sales profits to agribusiness (the top ten agribusinesses in the world by income are Global North companies) as well as the volatility of global supply chains. Digital, energy and communications technologies feature in all available CSA Country Investment Plans put together by the Bank and technological innovation is a key component of the Bank’s Climate Change Action Plan. Three broad categories of technology emerge from the Bank’s CSA communications; 1. Renewable energy to power production, processing and distribution, 2. Farm technologies such as sensors, transport and machines and, 3. Future technologies including mechanical carbon capture (distinct from low-tech carbon capture which looks to protect or expand ecological carbon sinks). Such technologies are commonly found in discourses on green growth. For CSA to achieve its goals a significant increase in available technology is required and such technology requires energy, mineral and material resources. The lack of acknowledgement of the need for new resources within CSA discourse is emblematic of the separation between the environment, nature and society that is inherent in the Bank’s world view.

The need within CSA for such technology promotes a continuation of the capitalist mode of production through extraction and does nothing to attempt to break that cycle which is at the heart of GHG emissions. The mining of rare earth elements is required for almost every facet of CSA associated technologies including batteries, magnets used in electricity generation, semiconductor films used in solar panels, even the rocket fuel needed to put weather and communications satellites into orbit. Current demands for rare earth elements are outstripping supply and it is expected that demand for them will more than double by 2060. This demand supports some of the most polluting, unsustainable, ecologically harmful and socially detrimental industries. The processes of extraction for these minerals, most notably lithium and cobalt, are rooted in colonial modes of thought and production including a subordination of local and ecological needs and knowledge to the global economic system and the degradation of land, health and environmental rights.

Conclusion

CSA is firmly bound to existing geopolitical structures making it incapable of producing action (such as lowering GHG emissions) outside the productivist world system. By focusing on how CSA discourse is generated by colonial and Malthusian histories it is clear why CSA continues to generate neo-Malthusian and neo-colonial outcomes. CSA discourse is important because it is represented as specifically apolitical and technocratic, however it is the political nature of CSA which makes it unable to achieve it’s apolitical and technocratic goals.

While great powers and agribusiness continue to benefit from the modern agricultural system global hunger grows and GHG emissions continue to rise. Within this extreme context CSA amounts to little more than a green-washed façade, offering unequal and piecemeal benefits to farmers, centring accountability for adaptation on those who have caused the least damage and offering no serious alternative to the highly exploitative technological determinism and market liberalisation which the Green Revolution showed to be unsustainable and of limited effectiveness.