The countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean will experience severe impacts of climate change, more than other world regions. They are also less well-positioned to cope with the expected stresses according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. While the specifics of these impacts are difficult to predict for different locations, it is expected that more extreme events are likely to occur: more drought, rising temperatures, and more floods. The stress will be greatest for those whose livelihoods depend on natural resources, but these same populations will be most vulnerable, often lacking knowledge and capabilities to react and respond effectively. Women, who typically have fewer assets than men, are often in more precarious positions.

Feed the Future Innovation Labs for Collaborative Research and CRSPs have been for many years at the forefront of developing effective measures to help men and women take steps to adapt to and mitigate climate change. The first phase of the SANREM CRSP in the 1990s, for example, helped to pioneer the landscape approach as a focus of development programming.  Its work in participatory natural resource management in a key Philippine watershed established methods for engaging households in monitoring the environmental health of their own communities. The SANREM Innovation Lab (formerly SANREM CRSP) has continued to study the operation of conservation agriculture production systems, or CAPS, to identify the barriers that small holders face in adopting these practices, and in the process, learning how to promote improved conservation techniques among all types of farmers even in the U.S.

Currently, the Livestock-Climate Change Innovation Lab has made adaption to climate change the central focus of its work. Its activities are increasing the resilience and working to increase incomes of livestock producers in key regions facing increased pressure on natural resources and changing climate. One recent project in Mali, for example, is working with herders to understand how they make decisions to move livestock in order to assist them in managing their herds for better productivity. The activity builds on earlier Global Livestock CRSP work in Mongolia and East Africa that used computer and satellite technologies to monitor forage conditions and price information for pastoral communities, allowing them to adapt to shifts in grass cover as a result of both short and longer-term weather effects in those regions.

INTSORMIL, Pulse, Horticulture, SANREM, and Peanut Innovation Labs and CRSPs have addressed concerns over climate change by focusing on breeding as well as adaptive agricultural practices, such as conservation agriculture, as methods for increasing yields despite the pressures of extreme weather events. The Pulse CRSP, as one of several examples, worked on developing bean cultivars for Africa that have enhanced levels of resistance to biotic and abiotic constraints.