One of FAO's 14 themes in support of sustainable development is climate change. CSA was developed by FAO as a unified approach to address the challenges of climate change.

The concept of Climate-smart agriculture was first launched by FAO in 2010 in a background paper prepared for the Hague Conference on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change (FAO, ”Climate-Smart” Agriculture Policies, Practices and Financing for Food Security, Adaptation and Mitigation. 2010), in the context of national food security and development goals, to tackle three main objectives:

• Sustainably increase food security by increasing agricultural productivity and incomes
• Build resilience and adapt to climate change
• Reduce and/or remove greenhouse gas emissions where possible

Ongoing FAO projects support work on CSA, for example, FAO’s Economics and Policy Innovations for Climate-Smart Agriculture (EPIC) programme and the Mitigation of Climate Change in Agriculture (MICCA) programme. The technical research and field work of FAO’s MICCA programme have provided evidence that climate-smart agricultural practices can reduce GHGs, improve livelihoods and make local communities better able to adapt to climate change. The evidence supports international climate negotiation processes undertaken through the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Also linked to CSA is FAO's Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries. It is becoming the main reference framework for managing fisheries and implementing the principles of sustainable development. The main aim is to ensure that despite natural changes in the ecosystem, the capacity of the aquatic ecosystems to produce fish food, revenues and livelihoods is maintained indefinitely for the benefit of the present and future generations.

Livestock can make a large contribution to climate-msary food supply systems. FAO facilitates and is actively involved in two muti-stakeholder partnerships, the Global Agenda for Sustainable Livestock and the Livestock Environmental and Assessment Partnership (LEAP).