Research Series 85: Financing climate adaptation and resilient agricultural livelihoods

Climate change is imposing a transformative process on agricultural and food systems, threatening the livelihoods of people dependent on them, including a large proportion of the world’s poor people. Moving to a process that contributes to improving rather than endangering livelihoods is the challenge that climate change adaptation and resilience-building efforts currently face.

Transformative adaptation that addresses the interactions between food systems and climate change requires adequate, accessible, and appropriate financing. Expanding climate finance resources from the public sector and creating an incentivizing environment for private sector investments is needed to attain adequate levels of financing. Appropriate finance must be designed to address specific characteristics of adaptation investments, such as risk, delayed returns, high social values, and new and unproven activities. Using blended finance integrated with development finance can generate financing appropriate to the investment needs.