FAO calls for climate finance for forest and farm smallholders
Smallholders produce as much as USD 1.5 trillion worth of food, fuel, timber and non-timber products each year, making them collectively by far the world’s largest private-sector player. However, rural producers are on the frontline of climate change and face increasingly difficult conditions including variable rainfall and temperature, which affects food production, exacerbates the threats of hunger and poverty, and risks farmers making changes to land use that harm the environment.
“Grassroots organizations bring smallholders together and support them in powerful, diverse ways, including helping their members overcome the challenges posed by climate change and reducing greenhouse gases through promoting sustainable forest and land management,” said Forest and Farm Facility Manager David Kaimowitz. “These organizations are effective, efficient and extraordinarily resourceful – but they need backing.” Case studies presented in the policy brief illustrate the potential of forest and farm organizations in building the climate-resilience of smallholders. In Viet Nam, for example, such organizations are helping smallholder tree-growers earn money from honey and herb production while increasing the rotation lengths of their tree plantations, adding to the carbon sequestration role of plantations while enabling smallholders to diversify their incomes. The policy brief calls for an immediate upsurge in climate finance for producer organizations, which it says would build vital resilience into smallholder livelihoods, landscapes and food systems while strengthening efforts to build back better from the COVID-19 pandemic. “Helping any single smallholder cope with and combat climate change will have little impact at a global scale, but helping millions through their own representative organizations will be transformative,” said Duncan Macqueen, an author of the policy brief from Forest and Farm Facility partner the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). New publications on resilience
“Making adaptive change requires resources, which is where the international community can provide crucial help,” said AgriCord’s Noora Simola, an editor of the publication.
The Forest and Farm Facility is a partnership between FAO, IIED, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and AgriCord. It provides direct financial support and technical assistance to strengthen forest and farm producer organizations representing smallholders, rural women’s groups, local communities and indigenous peoples’ institutions.
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last updated: Friday, October 8, 2021

Forest and farm producers – climate change sentinels

