Scaling up innovative climate change adaptation and insurance solutions in Senegal

AlertNet: The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and Oxfam America, supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Swiss Re respectively, today committed at the Clinton Global Initiative to expand their ground-breaking "R4 Rural Resilience Initiative" to help the rural poor to protect their crops and livelihoods from the impacts of climate variability and change, including drought.

This innovative public-private partnership will be expanded from Ethiopia to Senegal over the next five years. It empowers farmers and food-insecure rural households with integrated risk management tools to develop long-term resilience.

"For the 1.3 billion people living on less than a dollar a day who depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, natural disasters are a constant threat to their food security. The most vulnerable people in the world are being hit by more frequent and intense climate-related disasters. The world knows how to do this: Proven tools have broken the cycle of emergency hunger for millions, building resilience in the face of repeat disasters," said WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran.

R4 will enable poor farmers in Senegal to strengthen their food and income security by managing risks through a four-part approach - improving natural resource management (community risk reduction), accessing microcredit ("prudent" risk taking), gaining insurance coverage (risk transfer), and increasing savings (risk reserves)...