Central America has long-been recognized as a region prone to soil and land degradation (e.g., Scherr and Yadav (1996:21). The main cause of this soil degradation is twofold: much of Central America consists of steep hillsides and unequal land distribution that has forced many resource-poor farmers to farm these marginal areas (Hellin et al. 2017). The encroachment onto hillsides represents a move to an area of lower resilience (resistance to degradation) and higher sensitivity (degree to which soils degrade when subjected to degradation processes). Sloping lands are very susceptible to rapid soil degradation caused by physical, chemical and biological processes (Stocking, 1995). Central America’s mountains and heavy rainfall, as well as poor land management, make much of the region particularly vulnerable to soil degradation. In addition, the widespread conversion of forests to agriculture has created serious soil erosion problems in the region. In response, there are growing efforts directed at the promotion of soil and water conservation (SWC) technologies (Hellin and Schrader, 2003). Climate change is likely to lead to increased water scarcity in the coming decades (Lobell et al. 2008) and to changes in precipitation patterns. This will lead to more short-term crop failures and long-term production declines. Farmers have a long record of adapting to the impacts of climate variability, but predicted climate change represents an enormous challenge that will test farmers’ ability to adapt and improve their livelihoods (Adger et al. 2007). The fifth assessment report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for Central and South America concludes that farmers in Central America are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. An increasing body of scientific evidence points to the negative impacts on Central American agriculture of changing temperature and rainfall patterns. Lobell et al. (2008) looked at the combined outputs of 20 of the latest GCM models for 2030 under three different emission scenarios and reported median precipitation declines of approximately -5% for Central America in both the winter (DecemberFebruary) and summer (June-August) seasons. This is of concern due to the fact that smallholder farming in Central America is predominantly rainfed. There is a need to work with farmers to develop climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies and to increase the countries’ capacity to adapt to climate change. Thus, climate smart agricultural practices have often been promoted. These are practices that contribute to: (1) increasing global food security; (2) enhancing farmers’ ability to adapt to a changing climate; and (3) mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. Many of these same practices were promoted in the 1980s and 1990s under the guise of SWC, but farmer non-adoption was far too common. Much can be learned from these past endeavors to ensure that current efforts are better designed, implemented and adopted. This manual suggests new approaches to SWC in Central America and describes tools and strategies to achieve them. The new approaches include: exploring other soil conservation options besides erosion control, examining the spatial context, examining farming systems as a whole, encouraging active farmer participation, and monitoring and evaluating the effects of the adopted technologies. The Buena Milpa project in Guatemala is presented as a case study that used these approaches, described in three separate boxes showing the scaling of soil conservation practices in the study area, its agricultural innovation system, and its monitoring and evaluation strategies.