Building climate resilience among forest and farm producers

Key messages

Forest and farm smallholders supply at least one-third of the world’s food and face increasingly difficult climate conditions. These include temperature extremes, more variable rainfall, droughts, storms, flooding, pest and disease outbreaks.
Forest and farm producer organizations – member organizations, such as cooperatives, which bring together communities, private smallholders and indigenous peoples – are well-placed to help their members overcome the huge challenges posed by climate change through training, advocacy and other support services.
FAO, IIED and AgriCord call for an immediate upsurge in climate finance for these organizations to build vital resilience into smallholder livelihoods, landscapes and food systems. The benefits will be felt at a planetary scale.

Key findings

	Forest and farm producer organizations building resilience – strength in numbers and landscapes FAO/AgriCord report This publication draws together global findings from a series of twelve case studies of forest and farm producer organizations in Africa (9), Asia (3) and Latin America (2). They focus on solutions, best practices, and models which could be scaled up to build climate resilience. Forest and farm producer organizations are already highly operational in promoting the resilience of smallholder livelihoods and landscapes. The practical resilience solutions of producer organizations often include nature-based solutions (e.g., planting crops in forests or trees on farms, rotating crops, organic farming) and inclusive landscape management and services (e.g., adopting particiaptory land-use planning, providing equal access to services, using technology). Forest and farm producer organizations resilience management is embedded in i) improving the viability of livelihoods, ii) managing crises, and iii) creating ecological co-benefits. Scaling up smallholder climate resilience requires strong grassroots organizations, direct action, investment and finance today.
	Diversification for climate resilience -Thirty options for forest and farm producer organizations IIED report This publication presents 30 practical climate-resilience options for forest and farm producer organisations. They are based on climate-resilience literature and 10 previously published international case studies of organizations supported by the Forest and Farm Facility in Bolivia, Ecuador, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Nepal, Tanzania, Togo, Vietnam and Zambia. Climate resilience is a matter of survival. There are 30 diversification options of forest and farm producer organisations which fall into 4 categories: socio-cultural, ecological, economic and physical. Forest and farm producer organisations are a unique organizational pathway to scale up these efforts to build resilience, reduce poverty, conserve biodiversity, restore forest landscapes and mitigate climate change.
	Forest and farm producers – climate-change sentinels FAO Policy brief This policy brief is a synthesis of the FAO/AgriCord and IIED publications. It summarizes key findings and sets out six clear recommendations for how to build long-term climate resilience among smallholders. Climate change is occurring at a speed outside the range of past experience. Almost 1.3 billion people depend on forests for at least part of their livelihoods, and smallholder farmers supply at least one-third of the world’s food. Smallholder farmers are already taking action on climate resilience and producer organizations are best-placed to support them. We urgently need to invest and scale up support for forest and farm producer organizations to boost the resilience of smallholder farmers – for their own livelihoods, for global food security, and to maintain sustainable forests and farms.
	30 resilience options – diverse ways for grassroots organizations to flourish in the face of climate change FAO/IIED Infographic This infographic summarizes the 30 practical climate-resilience options from the IIED report in an easy-to-digest visual format. The need to adapt to the changing climate is urgent in order to safeguard livelihoods, food systems and the planet. There are 30 clear, practical actions forest and farm producer organizations can take to help their members flourish in the face of climate change. More support and investment is urgently needed at grassroots level to scale up this activity and create a greater impact. Direct action is needed today.