Help Small-Scale Farmers Adapt to Climate Change to Avoid Increased Hunger and Migration
By Abdi Ali
Published February 14, 2021
Widespread hunger and global instability is inevitable unless strategies to help small-scale farmers adapt to climate change are put in place and implemented.
“It is unacceptable that small-scale farmers who grow much of the world’s food are left at the mercy of unpredictable weather patterns, with such low investment to help them to adapt,” says Gilbert F Houngbo, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). “Their increasingly common crop failures and livestock deaths put our entire food system at risk.”
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Research shows that the production of important staple crops such beans, maize and cassava could decrease by as much as 50 to 90 percent by 2050 in parts of
Angola, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe due to climate change, which would result in substantial increases in hunger and
poverty. If nothing changes, climate change could push more than 140 million people to migrate by 2050. Price volatility is also expected, as natural
disasters in one part of the world can cause the price of grain everywhere to increase by more than 50 percent.
Houngbo announced the launch of IFAD’s Enhanced Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture Programme (ASAP+) at the Climate Adaptation Summit on 26 January, 2021 alongside IFAD’s Goodwill Ambassadors Idris and Sabrina Elba who discussed the topic with Alexander de Croo, Prime Minister of Belgium, and Dag Inge Ulstei,
Norway’s Minister of International Development.
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According to a 2020 report by IFAD, only 1.7 percent of global climate finance – a fraction of what is needed – goes to small-scale farmers in developing countries despite their disproportionate vulnerability to the impacts of climate change.
ASAP+, that aims to mobilise US$500 million to reduce climate change threats to food security, lower greenhouse gases and help more than 10 million people adapt to weather changes, is envisioned to be the largest fund dedicated to channelling climate finance to small-scale producers.
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IFAD says ‘ASAP+ will focus on low income countries that depend the most on agriculture and face the greatest challenges in terms of food insecurity, rural
poverty and exposure to climate change’.
The programme, that also seeks help countries achieve their nationally determined contributions set under the Paris agreement, is expected to bring 4 million hectares of degraded land under climate resilient practices, and sequester around 110 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent over 20 years.
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“Small-scale farmers in rural areas play a pivotal role in ensuring sustainability, stability, and security in the world. Climate adaptation funding must not
leave them behind,” says Jo Puri, Director of IFAD’s climate change division. “ASAP+ will contribute to the global call for reducing greenhouse gases while
ensuring significant income-related benefits for rural farmers and other vulnerable people.”
Small-scale farming systems currently produce half of the world’s food calories, but are often entirely reliant on natural resources, including rain. As a result, they are at significant risk from increasing temperatures, erratic rainfall, pest infestations, rising sea levels, and extreme events such as floods, droughts, landslides, typhoons and heat waves.
IFAD says ASAP+ builds on its Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture Programme (ASAP) which, it says, has already channelled US$300 million to more than 5
million farmers in 41 countries with investments in promoting climate-sensitive agricultural techniques and nature-based solutions, and access to
infrastructure and technologies such as small-scale irrigation, rainwater harvesting systems, weather information and drought- and flood-resistant crops.