After months of research and analysis my project is finally complete, it was a very different experience than I originally expected due to COVID-19 but we adapted and made the most of it.
The goal of my research was to highlight the opportunities for leveraging Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) to contribute to improvements in food security and nutrition in Climate Smart Villages in Myanmar. Before I began this research I expected that CSA would help to improve the livelihoods of the villagers in terms of food security and dietary diversity but as I worked my way through the data this seemed to not be the case.
Across the four CSVs in Myanmar it was determined that the implementation of CSA in households actually had a negative correlation with food security. A number of different factors were associated with this decline, for example, across the four CSVs the weather in 2019 was harsher compared to 2018. This had an impact on crop yields therefore food security was also affected. The most important factor that we discovered during this research was that many CSA options have a long gestation period before any benefits can be enjoyed. When planning on implementing CSA in the future it should be considered to pair both short and long term CSA practices to ensure that households are protected on all timescales.
I really enjoyed carrying out this research, it was very unfortunate that I didn’t get the opportunity to travel to Myanmar and work directly with IIRR but hopefully we can continue this research into the future.
