Focus of 2019 Summary for Policy Makers is on Agri-food chain and on Finance for Adaptation

This year, Technical Expert Meetings around the globe—including regional meetings in Africa, Latin America and Asia—highlighted options for climate action in the agri-food chain and in finance for adaptation.

Primary food production is a resource-intensive activity. Heavy reliance on fossil-fuel-based energy and significant water and fertilizer use in primary food production result in environmental impacts, including greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, increasing food demand, due to an ever-growing population and a changing climate, will further exacerbate the environmental impacts.

Many solutions exist in the form of low-carbon technologies with high growth potential. These include wind- and solar-powered water pumps, solar water heaters, bioenergy crop-drying heaters, mini-hydro power turbines, and insulated cool stores.

A key recommendation is for governments to set enabling policy and regulatory frameworks to create the incentives in the agri-food sector. This should include providing incentives for the uptake of new farming practices, reducing import restrictions and tariffs for clean technologies, and abandoning fossil fuel subsidies.

Regarding the issue of adaptation finance, a lack of transparency, particularly for domestic and private sector finance, means that public and private actors are often unable to identify what financing is already available and therefore which financial products are best suited to which types of adaptation projects and at what level. This means many companies currently lack the awareness and knowledge base for developing the business case for adaptation action.

The Summary for Policymakers explains that all actors across the financial system can contribute to making greater levels of adaptation finance available.

Examples of capacity-building programmes across Asia and Africa demonstrate that increasing civil society understanding of policy processes (such as application modalities to access multilateral climate funds) has real benefits in enabling the local level to actively participate in national and regional adaptation planning.