At a Committee on World Food Security
(CFS42) side event yesterday, representatives from the Food and Agriculture Organization,
the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food
Programme (WFP) had an opportunity to present the programmes of their
respective agencies, as well as to explain to an engaged audience how they are
working together to realize the Adaptation and Innovation Potential of
Smallholder Farmers and Rural Communities.
Moderator Martin Frick expressed the dilemma that confronts
the international community. We live in a situation where 800 million people go
to bed hungry every day, and Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 is committed
to zero hunger by 2030. While this is an enormous challenge in itself, climate
change adds even more complexity.
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| Margarita Astralaga, IFAD |
“Risk has always been a dimension in agricultural
development, but climate change has raised the magnitude, and altered the
nature of risk,” according to Leslie Lipper of FAO’s Agriculture Development
Economics Division. The costs of adapting to climate change, which can be
significant, should not fall only on rural communities. That’s why
FAO and WFP have both promoted safety net and cash transfer programmes that
provide a basic income resilience to smallholders in some of the most food
insecure regions.
“This is critical work, but safety nets and hand outs aren’t
enough,” said WFP’s Inge Breuer. Increasingly, there is a need to combine such
programmes with climate risk management systems. For instance, through
cash-based transfers that incentivize rural people to participate in community
adaptation projects. “We have a lot of work going on to optimize food systems
and see what works best in rural communities. We are thinking about how we can
leverage these cash transfers to encourage new economic opportunities,” Breuer
said.
Similarly, Margarita Astralaga, Director of IFAD’s
Environment and Climate Division said that adaptation to climate change
should not be done on an ad hoc basis, which may create winners and losers in
rural areas; rather, adaptation investments should aim to increase the
resilience of the entire food system. Astralaga brought up the work being done
in the CALIP project in Bangladesh, where IFAD is partnering with local
universities to enhance climate modelling for a flash flood early warning
system. In this way, rural women and men living in the vulnerable Haor Delta
will have access to more accurate, real-time climate information, which can
afford them the ability to protect their rice crops, a vital income source.
Finally, Beat Roosli of the World Farmers’ Organization
(WFO) asserted that secure access to productive resources is a central factor when
farmers’ decide whether to make adaptation investments in their farms. “In this
regard, climate change and land tenure are inextricably linked,” he said. This
also raised the question of farm-size, and whether it’s better to optimize productivity
on each farm unit, or focus on aggregating small plots, thereby scaling up adaptation
investments. “The question of farm size is secondary at first, Roosli suggested,
“Farmers may have to scale up later, but first they must become more productive
with the resources they have.”