Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an approach that helps to guide actions needed to transform and reorient agricultural systems to effectively support development and ensure food security in a changing climate. CSA helps for developing agricultural strategies to secure sustainable food security under climate change. CSA provides the means to help stakeholders from local to national and international levels identify agricultural strategies suitable to their local conditions. CSA is one of the 11 Corporate Areas for Resource Mobilization under the FAO’s Strategic objectives.

There are three main pillars of CSA. They are:

 Productivity: CSA aims to sustainably increase agricultural productivity and incomes from crops, livestock and fish, without having a negative impact on the environment. This, in turn, will raise food and nutritional security. A key concept related to raising productivity is sustainable intensification

Adaptation: CSA aims to reduce the exposure of farmers to short-term risks, while also strengthening their resilience by building their capacity to adapt and prosper in the face of shocks and longer-term stresses. Particular attention is given to protecting the ecosystem services which ecosystems provide to farmers and others. These services are essential for maintaining productivity and our ability to adapt to climate changes.

Mitigation: Wherever and whenever possible, CSA should help to reduce and/or remove greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This implies that we reduce emissions for each calorie or kilo of food, fibre and fuel that we produce. That we avoid deforestation from agriculture. And that we manage soils and trees in ways that maximizes their potential to acts as carbon sinks and absorb CO2 from the atmosphere.

It aims to tackle three main objectives:

Sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and incomes;

Adapting and building resilience to climate change;

Reducing and/or Removing greenhouse gas emissions, where possible.

Food security and climate change can be addressed together by transforming agriculture and adopting practices that are "climate-smart". Farmers are under the greatest threat from climate change, but they also play a major role in addressing it. Climate-smart farming techniques can increase agricultural productivity and incomes, make rural communities more resilient to climate change and where possible, mitigate climate change. Local knowledge, as well as the capacity to link research and local activities, plays a key role in scaling up the CSA approach to reinforce the resilience of farmers’ livelihoods.