Despite growing more than a third of global food, public climate finance for agriculture and land has failed to adequately target activities most relevant to smallholder farmers and help them adapt to climate change impacts.
According to a new report by the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, of the $16.3 billion of international public climate finance that flowed into the food systems between 2017 and 2022, only $9.1 billion targeted sustainable activities relevant to smallholder farmers.
Gertrude Kenyangi, executive director of Support for Women in Agriculture and Environment and farmer in Uganda, who has watched her country suffer from droughts, floods, mudslides and landslides in recent years described climate change as a huge burden to smallholder farmers, especially women.
She said climate change has continued to alter and disrupt the farming cycle across countries, stressing the need for millions of smallholder farmers to adopt nature-based farming practices such as agroecology or regenerative approaches.
“Climate change has become evident daily in our lives and the impact has been massive in the agricultural sector,” she said at the side-lines of the COP29 summit.
“The sector provides livelihoods to millions of farmers globally and the finance to transform the food systems to become resilient must be adequate, “she noted.
Read also: COP29: UN urges global leaders to ramp up climate commitments
“The public climate finance into the food system must increase from the current three percent to help farmers easily adapt to the impact of climate change,” she added.
Diane Sibanda, president and founder of the Botswana Farmers Association said it is time smallholder farmers have a seat at the negotiation table so that the world understands their climate change challenge.
She called for an urgent need to get the finance and technology farmers need, especially in Africa to easily adapt to the impact of climate change, while noting that the crisis is already cutting crop yields that could lead to widespread food shortages if not tackled urgently.
According to her, adequate climate finance supports developing countries’ transition to low-carbon, resilient economies.
After two weeks of intense negotiations at the just concluded COP 29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, rich countries pledged to contribute $300 billion a year by 20235 to help poorer nations combat the effects of climate change.
While it marks a significant increase from the $100 billion agreed in Paris, the deal has been highly criticised by developing nations as woefully insufficient to address the scale of the climate crisis.
While a broader target of $1.3 trillion annually by 2035 was adopted, only $300bn annually was designated for grants and low-interest loans from developed nations to aid the developing world in transitioning to low-carbon economies and preparing for climate change effects.
“The money is not enough with the scale of the current climate crisis. How much of it will find its way to agriculture and a just transition of the food systems?” asked Sibanda.
“Farmers are at the front line of the impact of climate change and yet very little comes to the food systems,” she added.
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