Call for Papers: Transforming agri-food systems: CGIAR innovations for climate resilience, sustainability and scalable impact

Ednah Carrick May 5, 2026

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Closing Date: 31 December 2026

Call for Papers: Transforming agri-food systems: CGIAR innovations for climate resilience, sustainability and scalable impact

Overview

This Special Issue focuses on transforming agri food systems through Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centres (CGIAR) innovations addressing climate resilience, sustainability, and scalable development impact. It situates agri food systems at the center of global responses to climate change, environmental degradation, and persistent development challenges. The Issue emphasizes applied research that bridges scientific knowledge with implementation across food, land, and water systems.

It highlights CGIAR’s role as a global research partnership generating innovations for climate adaptation, mitigation, and sustainability transitions. The collection foregrounds innovation to impact pathways that move beyond experimentation toward sustained adoption and systems transformation. It recognizes co creation, stakeholder engagement, and systems thinking as essential principles guiding effective climate resilient innovation. The Special Issue positions applied evidence as critical for informing policy, investment, and practice in diverse socio ecological contexts.

Climate change increasingly disrupts food production, water availability, livelihoods, and ecosystem integrity, particularly in low and middle income countries. Extreme weather events, climate variability, and long term environmental stress compound existing vulnerabilities within agri food systems. Despite expanding scientific knowledge, significant gaps persist between research outputs and real world implementation at scale. Many innovations remain confined to pilot phases, failing to achieve sustained adoption or broader systems level impact. Institutional fragmentation, weak governance arrangements, and limited policy coherence constrain effective scaling of innovations.

Financial barriers, limited investment readiness, and misaligned incentives further restrict innovation uptake across contexts. Social inequalities, including gender, youth, and marginalization, shape uneven access to climate resilient solutions. Digital and climate information innovations face challenges related to infrastructure, capacity, trust, and long term sustainability. Evidence on trade offs, unintended consequences, and contextual adaptation remains limited within peer reviewed literature. As a result, policymakers and practitioners lack consolidated, practice based guidance on what works, where, and why.

The Special Issue aims to showcase applied, practice oriented research on CGIAR innovations advancing climate resilience and sustainability outcomes. It prioritizes evidence from innovations tested or implemented in real world agrifood, water, environmental, and institutional settings. The Issue seeks to advance understanding of scaling pathways, including governance, finance, markets, and enabling environments. It documents implementation experiences, highlighting barriers, enablers, trade offs, and contextual adaptation processes. The collection strengthens evidence linking innovation outcomes to resilience, sustainability, and livelihood impacts.

This Special Issue welcomes submissions from authors unaffiliated with CGIAR, and actively encourages external perspectives on CGIAR initiatives and the wider themes addressed by the issue. CGIAR seek contributions aligned with the CGIAR Impact Pathways across the following thematic areas:

Theme 1: Climate-Resilient Agrifood Systems (Aligned with One CGIAR Impact Pathway: Climate Adaptation and Mitigation)
Theme 2: Water, Land, and Ecosystem Resilience Aligned with One CGIAR Impact Pathways: Environmental Health and Biodiversity; Climate Adaptation and Mitigation)
Theme 3: Digital, Data, and Climate Information Innovations (Aligned with One CGIAR Impact Pathways: Climate Adaptation and Mitigation; Policies and Institutions)
Theme 4: Scaling Innovations for Impact (Aligned with One CGIAR Impact Pathways: Poverty Reduction, Livelihoods, and Jobs; Policies and Institutions)
Theme 5: Institutions, Governance, and Policy Innovations (Aligned with One CGIAR Impact Pathways: Policies and Institutions; Gender Equality, Youth, and Social Inclusion)
Theme 6: Nutrition, Livelihoods, and Social Resilience Outcomes (Aligned with One CGIAR Impact Pathways: Nutrition, Health, and Food Security; Poverty Reduction, Livelihoods, and Jobs)
Theme 7: Learning, Evaluation, and Systems Transformation (Cross-cutting across all One CGIAR Impact Pathways)

Call for Papers: Transforming agri-food systems: CGIAR innovations for climate resilience, sustainability and scalable impact Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

Climate-smart crop, livestock, and/or fisheries innovations
Stress-tolerant varieties and diversified production systems
Agroecological and regenerative approaches for resilience
Innovations addressing nutrition, equity, and resilience co-benefits
Innovations in sustainable water management (irrigation, rainfed systems, water reuse)
Integrated watershed and landscape management approaches
Circular bioeconomy innovations and processes
Nature-based solutions and ecosystem-based adaptation
Managing trade-offs between productivity, resilience, and sustainability
Climate and weather information services for decision-making
Digital tools supporting adaptation, risk management, and early warning
Use of remote sensing, AI, and big data in resilience planning
Barriers and enablers to uptake of digital climate innovations
Pathways and models for scaling CGIAR innovations
Demand signaling, user-centered design, and co-creation approaches
Financing mechanisms and investment readiness for climate innovations
Role of private sector, development partners, and innovation intermediaries
Enabling policies and regulatory frameworks for climate resilience
Institutional innovations supporting collective action and inclusion
Gender, youth, and social equity dimensions of resilience innovations
Governance, including multi-level governance and cross-sectoral coordination
Nutrition-sensitive and food systems innovations under climate stress
Livelihood diversification and resilience building
Social protection, safety nets, and climate risk management
Measuring resilience outcomes beyond productivity
Monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) frameworks for CGIAR innovations
Systems-based, theory-of-change, and process-oriented assessments
Managing uncertainty, complexity, and unintended consequences
Evidence of transformative change and long-term resilience impacts
Learning from CGIAR Initiatives and cross-initiative synthesis studies

Submission Guidelines/Instructions:

Please refer to the Author Guidelines to prepare your manuscript. When submitting your manuscript, please answer the question “Is this submission for a special issue?” by selecting the special issue title from the drop-down list.