Financing climate adaptation for smallholder farmers is critical

EnergyBangla: Ahead of the United Nations climate change meeting in Germany, Kanayo F. Nwanze, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) stresses the climate resilience needs of 500 million smallholder farms.

 With World Environment Day approaching next week, key negotiations within the UN’s climate change talks are to take place in Bonn. IFAD wants to see greater recognition of the climate impacts smallholder farmers have to face and more assistance to meet that challenge.

 “One group of people are really important in all this, but are almost invisible in global discussions on climate change - these are smallholder farmers,” says IFAD President Kanayo Nwanze. “Smallholders are on the front line of climate impacts, so require urgent action to increase their resilience to the climate crisis.”

 Smallholder farmers may not be attending the climate negotiations in Bonn, but they are aware of the impact of climate change on their lives: more droughts, floods, hurricanes, extreme heat and sea level rise. Small farmers and their families across many developing countries are the hardest hit with little capacity to adapt.

“What smallholders need is recognition in global dialogues on climate change of the role they can and must play in the solution,” says Elwyn Grainger-Jones, Director of IFAD’s Environment and Climate Division. “Add to that a major effort at country level to unlock smallholder farmer potential to adapt to the climate crisis while helping them transition from subsistence to profitable and sustainable entrepreneurs.  IFAD will play its part in supporting this effort.”...

Plowing with oxen in Zambia, shot by Amanita Phalloides, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license