Challenge
The principal challenge addressed by this Initiative is the poor climate adaptation preparedness of the food and agricultural systems in low- and middle-income countries. The adverse impacts of climate variability and extremes in the Global South are well documented. The loss of productive assets and human capital, coupled with the effect of uncertainty on agricultural investments, stymie smallholders’ efforts to improve livelihoods, exacerbating poverty and social tensions.
This Initiative’s partner countries face serious climate vulnerabilities, including droughts, floods and high temperatures in Kenya, Senegal, and Zambia; droughts and high temperatures in Morocco and Guatemala; and floods and rising temperatures in the Philippines.
Demand has shifted from understanding climate change impacts to designing innovations and directing financial flows to achieve ambitious climate and food systems targets. Isolated interventions to increase crop yields or strengthen markets no longer suffice; it is critical to transform systems to simultaneously enhance resilience, productivity and equity.
Objective
This Initiative will transform the climate adaptation capacity of food, land and water systems in six low- and middle-income countries, ultimately increasing the resilience of smallholder production systems to withstand severe climate change effects like drought, flooding and high temperatures.
Activities
This objective will be achieved through:
- Reducing risk for producers’ livelihoods and in value chains by employing agricultural risk management, climate-smart innovations and digital information services to reduce the impact of variable weather and extreme events on smallholder farmers.
- Understanding climate security risks and identifying paths to climate-resilient peace, including equitable access to natural resources.
- Ensuring policymakers have the necessary evidence to develop urgently needed, holistic and context-specific policies and adaptation strategies, as well as untangling complexities across natural and social sciences that hinder progress.
- Building capacity for policies that bring together local needs and available tools to enable governance for resilience, working across levels, scales and sectors, and drawing out “champions of change” who can advocate for local investment and empowerment and inclusion of all.
- Scaling climate finance with innovative mechanisms that increase farmers’ access to finance at the local level and help policymakers identify new opportunities at the national level.
- Ensuring social equity, because a climate-resilient, nutrition-secure future will require inclusion-sensitive policy, ensuring grassroots voices are heard and women, youth and marginalized groups included.
Engagement
This Initiative will work in the following countries: Guatemala, Kenya, Morocco, the Philippines, Senegal and Zambia.
Outcomes
Proposed 3-year outcomes include:
- At least US$30 million in investments enabled or supported through ClimBeR’s partnerships and technical assistance by 2024, focusing on disadvantaged groups, women, youth, and vulnerable smallholder farmers, that are contributing to building systemic resilience.
- By 2024, International agencies and policymakers use ClimBeR products to shape at least nine policies or investments to strengthen agricultural resilience, including at least two aimed at reducing agriculture-related climate security risk.
- Bundled climate services developed by the Initiative will reach at least 300,000 vulnerable farmers, at least 30% of whom are women, in 6 focal countries by 2024.
Impact
Projected impacts and benefits include:
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CLIMATE ADAPTATION & MITIGATION
A thorough system transformation, comprising bundles of technical innovations supported by new policies and multilevel institutional arrangements, helps smallholders to adapt successfully to climate change impacts, benefiting 30 million people. |
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NUTRITION, HEALTH & FOOD SECURITY
Innovations reducing the impact of variable weather and extreme events improve food security for 3 million people. For instance, the use of bundled climate services improves agricultural production and resilience, laying the foundation for improved food security. |
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POVERTY REDUCTION, LIVELIHOODS & JOBS
Improved production-system resilience through recognizing the relationships among climate, agriculture, security and peace generates long-lasting co-benefits in terms of reducing poverty, improving livelihoods and creating jobs, benefiting 13 million people. |
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GENDER EQUALITY, YOUTH & SOCIAL INCLUSION
At least US$30 million in new investments made by 2024 focusing on disadvantaged groups, women, youth and vulnerable smallholder farmers contributes to building their systemic resilience. This begins to close the gender gap for more than 5 million women working in food, land and water systems. |
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ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH & BIODIVERSITY
An integrated social-ecological-technological bundle approach with supporting policies and institutions supports successful scaling of climate-resilient agricultural ecosystem services, bringing 21 million hectares of land under sustainable management. |
Projected benefits are a way to illustrate reasonable orders of magnitude for impacts which could arise as a result of the impact pathways set out in the Initiative’s theories of change. In line with the 2030 Research and Innovation Strategy, Initiatives contribute to these impact pathways, along with other partners and stakeholders. CGIAR does not deliver impact alone. These projections therefore estimate plausible levels of impact to which CGIAR, with partners, contribute. They do not estimate CGIAR’s attributable share of the different impact pathways.
Partners
Building on the legacy of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), partnerships are essential to the success of the CGIAR Initiative on Climate Resilience. The Initiative engages 130 partners across six focus countries and globally on demand for the Initiative’s outputs, innovation and scaling. Partners include ministries that coordinate climate action; ministries of agriculture; national agricultural research and extension systems; meteorological departments; disaster management units; local, national and international NGOs; farmers’ organizations; United Nations organizations; other regional organizations and networks; insurance providers; micro-finance institutions and cooperatives; academia, training and research partners; and public-private partnerships.