Catalogue of Geospatial Tools and Applications for Climate Investments

Climate change poses unprecedented challenges for humanity. Agriculture is one of the most affected sectors as heat waves, floods, droughts, storms, and other natural disasters affect millions of small producers around the world.

For development organizations, it is vital to know how and where climate change is affecting smallholder farming in order to pursue effective interventions. IFAD uses geospatial technology to help map, assess, and target its climate-related investments.

This catalogue follows the ShareFair ideas marketplace organized by IFAD for COP26, and features innovative geospatial tools, IFAD case studies, and partners work, including:

Tools and approaches

• GeoAdapt: Geospatial climate vulnerability mapping tool
• GeoScan: Spatial data country profiles
• FAO Hand-in-Hand Geospatial Platform
• Earth Map: Tool for complex land monitoring
• SEPAL: Land monitoring platform
• Innovative geospatial portal on agro-ecological zoning
• Securing land rights with participatory GIS mapping
• Integrating GIS in monitoring and evaluation

Case studies

• Targeting the poor and people vulnerable to climate change in Latin America
• Assessing climate vulnerability in rural development projects
• Overcoming COVID-19 and conflict constraints in designing a project in Yemen
• Building resilience through community watershed management in Nepal
• A dashboard to monitor rangeland health in Lesotho
• Strengthening pastoral and herder resilience in Kyrgyzstan
• Uncovering the impact of rural investments on climate resilience
• Fighting fires with rice paddies in Sierra Leone

IFAD relies on the geospatial data and expertise of other organizations to perform its analyses. The catalogue features the work of a number of these important partners, most notably fellow Rome-based agencies: the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP), and the European Space Agency (ESA).

This catalogue promotes a number of geospatial tools under FAO’s Hand-in-Hand Initiative that can support the design and implementation of large agricultural programmes such as of IFAD.