Boosting investments to help small-scale farmers adapt to the impacts of the climate crisis is more urgent than ever, the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development at the United Nations Conference has warned.
Speaking at a side event of the conference that commemorates the historic 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, the Associate Vice-President of IFAD and a global climate leader, Jyostna Puri, “If we leave small-scale farmers out of the climate finance efforts, we are simply pulling the trigger for food shortages, food insecurity, mass migration, social unrest and conflict.
However, they often lack the financial resources and capacities to adapt to, or recover from, environmental changes and natural disasters increasingly triggered by climate change. It noted that approximately 3.3 to 3.6 billion people live in contexts that are highly vulnerable to climate change, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ; most of them live in rural areas.