Integration of climate concerns in agricultural policy making: Comparative study of India, Ethiopia, and Nigeria

Lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs) rely on agricultural production much more than high-income countries both in terms of the agricultural sector’s contributions to their economies as well as people’s livelihood strategies. Consequently, even though LMICs have contributed significantly less to global GHG emissions than higher-income countries, in order to protect their economies and people’s livelihoods their agricultural sectors need to adapt to climate change. This topic in LMICs has been relatively understudied, however, when compared to the context of high-income economies. The proposed article fits within this research gap and offers a comparative look at the integration of climate concerns in agricultural policy making in India, Nigeria, and Ethiopia. The article pays particular attention in this regard to poultry and cattle farming, which are prevalent in all three countries (e.g., India has a bovine population of approximately 300 million and poultry population of more than 800 million) but prone to significant disruption from climate change-driven droughts, flooding, and heat stress. The article examines to what extent government policies have addressed the risks posed by climate change to the production of animal-sourced foods but also to animal welfare and to associated GHG-emissions from the sector, how those policies have been implemented, and how they are likely to influence further development of the countries’ agricultural sectors. The article uses discourse and content analysis of the countries’ major agricultural-policy documents – e.g., Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme V (2020-2025), Nigeria’s National Agricultural Technology and Innovation Policy (2022-2027) and various Indian state’s agricultural policies (which in India are devolved to the state level). The article supplements the document analysis with analysis of relevant data from the FAO and nationally representative surveys and analysis of semi-structured interviews with Indian, Ethiopian, and Nigerian food-security and agricultural researchers, drawing on long-standing comparative research of food-security governance in the three countries. The article concludes with recommendations identified on the basis of the comparative research.