Nov 12, 2022
Adaptation & Agriculture Day on 12 November is one of COP27’s 11 thematic days. Given the increased food insecurity, scientific evidence showing unpreparedness for the impending extreme weather events, and need for further climate financing, discussions today address ways to increase agriculture productivity; enhance resilience and livelihoods for small scale farmers, and halt potential food crises.
Adaptation and resilience are crucial, particularly for low- and middle-income countries. Indeed, climate adaptation strategies targeting the most vulnerable nations can reduce the losses and suffering from droughts and floods, enhance agriculture sustainability, and ensure farmers’ contribution to poverty reduction and nutrition.
While climate change affects all aspects of the food system, agriculture and the food system also represents a significant cause of climate change. The IPCC has reported (2019) that agriculture, forestry, and other land use activities accounted for 23 percent of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions between 2007 and 2016. If food transportation and packaging are factored, the number could raise by a further 14 percent.
CIF grasps the importance of focusing not only on climate mitigation investments but adaptation investments, too. The Forest Investment Program (FIP) manifests CIF’s funding priorities revolving around famers’ empowerment, forests’ protection, and climate action.
In Ghana, one of the world’s leading cocoa producers, the livelihoods of 13 percent of its total population (about 800,000 families, that is) rely on the cocoa sector. At the same time, cocoa farming accounts for half of the country’s deforestation — an environmental degradation costing Ghana about 10 percent of its annual GDP. FIP invests in climate-smart cocoa practices to help farmers manage the risk of droughts and floods by giving shade tree seedlings to cocoa farmers and securing the ownership of each tree. In this way, cocoa crops are protected by shaded trees against drought and flood; in addition, farmers, particularly women, have rights to a high value timber asset, which they can liquidate in the future.
In Brazil, a $81.4 million FIP investment as of December 2021, supports national efforts to restrict the expansion of agricultural activities in the native forests of the Cerrado biome, a critically degraded region. The program aims at maintaining agricultural production levels since the sector is vital for the local communities livelihoods and the national economy and food security. Yet, this is also an environmentally strategic region, and therefore the program promotes intercropping, reduced mechanization, and fallow cropping to reduce carbon emissions and protect the remaining native vegetation.
Building upon the solid foundations and innovations of FIP, CIF’s recently launched holistic Nature, People and Climate (NPC) program promotes the participation of Indigenous groups in the management of natural resources. The program aims at supporting Indigenous people to employ their traditional knowledge and long experience to lead nature-based climate solutions. NPC, through the Dedicated Grant Mechanism for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (DGM), integrates and amplifies the voices of Indigenous people, whose livelihoods are at the sharp edge of climate change and are severely affected by the unsustainable management of farmlands, rivers, forests, coastal systems, and marine environments. DGM is a one-of-a-kind program designed and led by representatives of Indigenous groups to enhance their capacity to contribute to the national REDD+ dialogue and actions.
NPC is designed with community resilience and adaptation in mind, adhering to a consultative, multisectoral model, which enables all those affected [by the unsustainable management of natural resources] to participate in its full program cycle: from rapid diagnostic to identify and assess risks, requirements, and priorities; strategy development to determine ways to meet local climate objectives, and lastly implementation. The NPC prioritizes investments in adaptation and nature-based solutions to climate change. These investments target assisting local governments; attracting investment from the private sector; offering legislative advice; incorporating climate smart interventions and creating markets for nature-based products and services.
The NPC program will finance and empower local, sustainable, and socially inclusive enterprises of Indigenous people and communities, and puts Indigenous people at the driver’s seat of climate change solutions, taking into consideration their knowledge and experience, and increasing their capacities. Earlier this week at COP27, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Fiji, and Kenya were confirmed as the first countries to participate in the program, along with Africa’s Zambezi River Basin Region, cutting across Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, and Tanzania.
55 developing countries, representing two billion people, initially applied to participate in CIF’s NPC investment program, corroborating the demand for the sustainable use of land and other natural resources. This worldwide engagement clues us in on the ever-increasing interdependence of health, food security, nutrition, and economic development with the protection of the natural environment, sustainable agriculture, and the empowerment of local communities. CIF stands for a just transition to a cleaner and greener world, the benefits of which (e.g., biodiversity conservation, GHG emissions mitigation, climate and disaster resilience strengthening, poverty reduction, and women’s empowerment as agents of change in climate action) are shared and enjoyed equally.
