Climate change is a global environmental challenge. Helping poor rural people adapt to the impact of climate change and enabling them to contribute to mitigation is not a task that can be performed by a single agency alone. It requires cooperation and a coordinated approach from the international community.

Partnerships are a way for IFAD to learn more about climate change, share its knowledge, strengthen the operations it supports, leverage additional funding and influence the global policy agenda. IFAD works with developing country governments, poor rural peoples’ organizations, non-governmental organizations and the private sector to design innovative programmes and projects that fit within national priorities for agriculture and rural development. It also works closely with other United Nations agencies and multilateral financial institutions.

IFAD supports efforts to strengthen the impact of the United Nations system’s work, and it participates in pilot initiatives to better coordinate the efforts of UN agencies at the country level to ‘deliver as one’. IFAD also works closely with the other Rome-based UN agencies: the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Food Programme.

The Global Environment Facility (GEF), as one of the main financial mechanisms for climate change, represents a key IFAD partner – IFAD is a GEF executing agency. IFAD/GEF cooperation currently focuses on nurturing the links among poverty reduction, sustainable land management and climate change issues. Through the Global Environment and Climate Change (GECC) Unit, IFAD helps countries access funding within the GEF climate change programme. This includes the GEF Trust Fund, GEF-managed resources under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (the Least Developed Country Fund and the Special Climate Change Fund) and the GEF-managed Adaptation Fund. Other important partners include the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development and subregional partnerships, such as TerrAfrica.

Given the impact that climate change is already having on the groups and areas where IFAD works, IFAD’s President made the case for the urgent need to include smallholder agriculture and food security in the climate change response at the Agriculture and Rural Development Day in Copenhagen in December 2009 that was held in conjunction with COP 15.

Source: IFAD