SHARM EL SHEIKH, Egypt, May 22 /PRNewswire/ — The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today joined African leaders in urging the world to rapidly provide more funding for climate adaptation. The foundation has also pledged $1.4 billion to help smallholder farmers manage the immediate and long-term impacts of climate change. The announcement was made by Mark Suzman, CEO of the Gates Foundation, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27).
For many regions of the world, climate change is bringing with it an unprecedented food and economic crisis. The food supply and livelihoods of more than two billion people are based on smallholder structures. However, less than 2% of global climate finance is currently being used to help small farms adapt to climate change. At the same time, the increasing frequency of extreme weather conditions and their effects will further exacerbate the food and economic crisis. Climate change will also increasingly jeopardize food security, reducing yields and reducing smallholder farmers’ resilience to crop failures.
“The effects of climate change are already devastating. Every moment the world hesitates to act, more people suffer and solutions are becoming more complex and expensive,” said Suzman. Voices of African farmers and governments to understand their priorities and act decisively.”
The foundation will fund immediate actions and long-term initiatives over a four-year period to help smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia build resilience and strengthen food security. The funding will spur African-led innovation to build a pipeline of climate-smart agriculture projects. In addition, it will promote new applications of digital technologies and climate-smart innovations for smallholder livestock and support smallholder farmers to achieve their full potential.
“Women in rural Africa are the backbone of their food systems, but they have never had equal access to the resources they need to reach their full potential or build resilience against emerging climate threats,” said Melinda French Gates, co-chair of the bill. & Melinda Gates Foundation “As the climate crisis accelerates, the critical role of women in their economies can no longer be overlooked. With the right financial and sales support, smallholder women can earn more in a day than they earn currently in a month This would ultimately transform regional food systems and enable a healthier, more sustainable and financially secure future for families and communities across the continent.”
To improve the lives of rural women in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, the foundation is deepening its partnership with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). IFAD’s objective is to promote initiatives that empower women farmers and support innovations at the interface of gender equality and climate adaptation. To this end, climate protection funding must be increased so that women in rural areas have better access to the climate-smart resources they need to strengthen their food systems.
To accelerate the development of new adaptation innovations, the foundation continues to work with an alliance of partners to double the budget of the CGIAR agricultural research partnership. The CGIAR Excellence in Agronomy initiative works with African research institutes, local businesses and agricultural organizations. Together, partners use methods such as big data, analytics and digital platforms to gain insights into how to increase income, food security and ecosystem health in smallholder communities.
“The climate crisis is doing enormous damage every day, putting people and economies across entire regions at risk,” said Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “More funding is needed to ensure that agricultural and technological innovation is widely available to vulnerable communities and can help them adapt to climate change, which would save lives and help people become more economically empowered.”
Additional investments included in the commitment announced today will support:
- The Adaptation to Africa Initiative (AAI) aims to rapidly build a pipeline of climate-smart agriculture projects in 23 African countries. The funding will provide targeted support for the technical capacity, planning and project development needed to implement the programs.
- The development of new applications of digital technologies will ensure that smallholder farmers can anticipate and respond to climate threats. This includes an innovative weather messaging platform, developed through a new partnership between the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) and TomorrowNow, which will bring climate-smart agricultural strategies to East African farmers through messaging. of text.
- Africa-led innovations to develop climate-smart measures to improve the health and productivity of animals while reducing their climate-harming emissions. This will be done in partnership with the International Development Research Center of Canada (IDRC).
This funding builds on more than a decade of financial commitment and the Foundation’s recent announcement during the United Nations General Assembly. There, the Foundation provided $100 million in funding to help alleviate the current food crisis in Africa and South Asia and address the root causes. The new commitment also builds on previous funding commitments focused on agricultural adaptation announced at previous climate summits:
Information about the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Guided by the belief that all lives are equal, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is committed to helping all people lead healthy and productive lives. In the developing world, it focuses on improving people’s health and enabling them to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty. The United States aims to ensure that all people – especially those with the fewest resources – have access to the opportunities they need to succeed in school and in life. Based in Seattle, Washington, the foundation is led by CEO Mark Suzman under the direction of co-chairs Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates and the Board of Directors.
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