Highlights:
Chapter 3.2 deals with increasing agriculture productivity and improving water management to enhance resilience.
Chapter 4.3 deals with the implications for poverty, inequality and social outcomes.
Among the four urgent actions identified:
Action Area 2: Increase agriculture productivity and food security through climate smart agriculture, and support to farmer‑led irrigation.
Climate change will affect labor productivity, particularly through heat stress, and will negatively impact agriculture. The CCDR model shows that the biggest impact on the economy is through shocks to labor productivity. This, in turn, affects livelihoods, food security—already tenuous at best—and the country's ability to recover from shocks.
The worst-affected are likely to be poor rural households, precisely those already least able to withstand shocks, including from extreme weather. Near-term investments in agriculture need to promote and incentivize increased sustainable production—including by improving irrigation efficiency as a major adaptation action—promote market access, knowledge and financing services in the rural economy, and create backward/forward links.
Irrigation, besides the improved soil and crop management it brings, is one of the vital prerequisites for improving DRC's climate‑smart agriculture (CSA) value chains for both food crops and higher‑value horticulture. Expanding farmer-led irrigation can be pursued gradually, starting in high-potential areas such as those where farmer's demand is strong, market access relatively good, water resources easily accessible, impacts of dry spells are increasing, and soil conditions/slope are favorable.
A certain prioritization of the agriculture value chains by the government can be envisaged by first considering the support to most water-demanding crops (like rice, maize, and all market-gardening and horticultural crops) and where food security benefits can benefit most vulnerable areas.
DRC needs to guide its agriculture economy toward further diversification, greater value creation, and a longer‑term integration of the various links within its agricultural value chains. To improve the functioning and integration of CSA value chains, two obstacles must be overcome: weak governance of the agricultural sector, and the question of the appropriate agricultural policy.
The country needs to have a single, coherent policy on cross-cutting aspects of agricultural development that integrates climate change, growth, land tenure security, irrigation, seed sector, integration of sylvopastoral practices, and access to public and private funding.
