**1. Introduction**

Climate change is now recognized as a major threat to food security and adequate nutrition in the twenty-first century [1–3]. Extreme weather events that threaten food security, such as droughts, heat waves, floods, wildfires and storms, will also become more frequent and severe [4] Adverse climate change is already having direct effects on agricultural production, impacting food supply and food security [5]. The quantity and nutritional quality of products generated by agricultural systems is influenced by a range of factors, including, inter alia, soil quality, nutrient availability, temperature, water

**Citation:** Hanley, A.; Brychkova, G.; Barbon, W.J.; Noe, S.M.; Myae, C.; Thant, P.S.; McKeown, P.C.; Gonsalves, J.; Spillane, C. Community-Level Impacts of Climate-Smart Agriculture Interventions on Food Security and Dietary Diversity in Climate-Smart Villages in Myanmar. *Climate* **2021**, *9*, 166. https://doi.org/10.3390/ cli9110166

Academic Editors: Christopher Robin Bryant, Andrea Vitali, Azzeddine Madani and Steven McNulty

Received: 25 September 2021 Accepted: 16 November 2021 Published: 21 November 2021

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**Copyright:** © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

availability, CO2 concentrations and the prevalence of pollinators [2,6,7]), many of which are undergoing changes due to climate change.

Changes in temperature and water availability are factors influenced by changing climates, particularly in vulnerable regions. The yields of most crop species are sensitive to alterations in temperature [8,9]. Indeed, when air temperatures exceed 30 ◦C, even for short periods, reductions in yields are expected in rainfed crops, regardless of the crop species [10,11]. Higher temperatures are also coupled with decreases in water availability due to increased evaporation and evapotranspiration, leading to crop yield reductions [9,12].

From a broader perspective, climate change can have a negative impact on the four pillars of food security, namely availability, access, utilization and stability (FAO et al. 2018). Food security is related to nutrition, and, consequently, malnutrition is an indicator of food insecurity. Dietary diversity is typically measured by the number of food groups eaten in the diet over a given time period. Overall, dietary diversity is often (although not always) a good indicator of micronutrient intake and associated malnutrition [13,14].

Dietary diversity outcomes are rarely considered when relating agricultural outputs to food security [15]. However, more ill health and mortality can be attributed to poor diet than to any other risk factor [16]. There are direct links between climate change, reduced access to food and diverse diets and increases in childhood stunting, wasting and low birth weights [14] as well as through direct temperature impacts on fetal health [17,18]. Stunting (height-for-age z-score < −2) occurs in children 5 years of age and below and can lead to shorter adult height, limited cognitive function and reduced adult income [19]. Childhood wasting (weight-for-height z-score < −2) is estimated to affect 10% of children globally and is associated with reduced lean mass and weaker immune systems, leaving children more susceptible to infections, which can result in death [20]. Low birth weights (<2500 g) are also associated with mothers and households who are food-insecure.

Food insecurity and micronutrient deficiencies associated with poor dietary diversity are major issues across Myanmar. Such challenges are attributed to diverse factors, such as conflict, poverty and vulnerability to natural disasters, which are becoming more frequent due to climate change [21]. According to the Myanmar Micronutrient and Food Consumption Survey 2017–2018, significant progress is needed to achieve the goals set by the World Health Organization for reducing wasting and stunting by 2025 [22]. The MMFC survey highlighted that nearly one in three children (26.7%) under the age of five are stunted in Myanmar, while 6.7% of children under the age of five are wasted and 19.1% of children in the same age bracket are underweight. Only 16% of babies aged 6–23 months receive the minimum acceptable diet for development at their age, while nearly 20% of adult men and 15% of adult women are underweight [23].

Over 23% of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are derived from agriculture, forestry and other land uses (AFOLU sector) [24–26]. Excluding land use change, agriculture contributes to approximately 11% of total anthropogenic GHG emissions, and requires up to 70% of our global fresh water supply [27]. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is a term used to describe a portfolio of practices that can reduce emissions and strengthen the adaptation of agricultural systems to climate change, while improving food security and livelihood outcomes [28]. The CSA approach anchors itself on three pillars that aim to jointly address food security and climate challenges, leading to systems that sustainably increase productivity and incomes while building resilience to climate variability, and seeking mitigation of GHG where possible [29,30].

Climate variability is experienced across most regions of Myanmar, with some regions receiving excessive rainfall, while other regions have insufficient rainfall, leading to drought periods during cropping cycles [31]. Access to safe and reliable water supplies, whether for irrigation, livestock or domestic use, is a key constraint to livelihoods and food production, with significant knock-on consequences for income [32]. Myanmar is also at increasing risk from a wide range of natural climate-influenced hazards, including cyclones, floods and droughts, that can have severe negative impacts on the livelihoods of the poor, contributing to seasonal food shortages. CSA programs in Myanmar to strengthen livelihood resilience will increasingly include diversification, including the increasing adoption of trees, livestock and off-farm incomes as risk aversion strategies for the rural poor.

Hence, the development, application and impact monitoring of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) strategies and programs is central to ensuring food system productivity to deliver key outcomes, including achieving food security, reducing malnutrition, reducing inequities and empowering the most vulnerable, while delivering resilience to climate change [33]. The impacts of climate change differ significantly across rural communities and agroecosystems. Hence, understanding, strategies and actions will need to take into account location-specific and community-based considerations [33,34].

The CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) developed and piloted the climate-smart village (CSV) approach in 2012 in Africa and South Asia, and later expanded CSV pilots to Latin America and Southeast Asia in 2014 [35]. The CSV approach was developed and promoted to address research gaps in climate-smart agriculture at the level of rural communities. This need arose as much of the knowledge on climate-smart agriculture technologies and practices has been initially developed in controlled environments of research farms and modeling. The CSV approach enables researchers to work in a participatory manner with local communities to test, demonstrate and generate evidence of which CSA practices can work for rural communities at the level of the CSV. The implementation of CSA in the CSVs includes testing and learning with farmers on a range of CSA interventions, including crop varieties, small livestock, small-scale aquaculture and improved farm management practices that consider climate change realities as experienced by the communities. CSA approaches place emphasis on the importance of soil, water and agro-biodiversity conservation within farms, as well as across larger landscape areas that determine the regional agroecology. The promotion of CSA practices in CSVs also includes a range of indirect agriculture interventions, including capacity development, and strengthening extension services (e.g., including agriculture finance and climate information services) that can enable farmers to transition towards climate-smart agriculture [36].

In Myanmar, the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR), with support from CGIAR-CCAFS and the International Development Research Center in Canada, has taken a participatory action research (PAR) approach to establish four climate-smart villages in unique agroecologies around the country [33]. This PAR supports a process to establish CSVs in Myanmar, particularly to demonstrate the viability and impact of location-specific CSA in the four distinct agroecologies. The research further aimed to identify scaling pathways for CSA via CSVs, to enable the more widespread adoption CSA portfolio-based approaches by NGOs and government agencies in Myanmar.

This study investigates the relationship between the promotion of CSA practices implemented in four climate-smart villages (CSVs) across Myanmar and the changes in household food security and diet diversification during the time period of the CSA intervention. The key objectives of the study are to (1) monitor impacts on household food security and dietary diversity in CSVs, (2) identify routes to households becoming more food-secure with improved dietary diversity and (3) inform food security and nutrition programs on impacts and outcomes from the adoption of climate-smart agriculture practices and technologies in rural communities.
