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"Before, these women were just waiting at home. Now, we are more educated. We are empowered to be more independent," says Ruperta Gagarin, a businesswoman from the Philippines.

The FIDA-MERESE project has helped farmers in the Jequetepeque and Cañete river basins become stewards of the ecosystems on which they depend.

The end of COP26 is fast approaching, and we’re still waiting for a final agreement. However, based on the draft texts that have been released, it’s clear there’s still a risk of gaps between long-term targets and short-term action.

The IFAD regional team held its annual East and Southern Africa Business Planning meeting to outline a vision for the next three years, under the IFAD 12 replenishment cycle. With less than 10 years to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the region’s small-scale farmers and rural people suffering the effects of the pandemic, climate change impacts, locust infestation and other crises, it is essential to plan bold actions to preserve and advance development gains.

Brazil’s São Francisco river is a place of convergences. The river delta, and the stunning tropical forest surrounding it, is home to many different ethnic groups who settled there in search of a fresh start. Plans for a new ecotourism route that would allow visitors to experience the area’s rich culture and traditions were well under way – and then the pandemic struck. Nevertheless, one IFAD-funded project managed to support the region’s artisans and fishers.

In recent years, saline intrusion – the encroachment of seawater into fresh water sources – has become a serious threat to small-scale farmers in Viet Nam’s Mekong Delta. Thanks to a public-private partnership, a local technology company was able to collaborate with an IFAD-supported project to create a lasting solution.

Agriculture is the main source of income and livelihood in rural Lao. But Lao crops are highly climate-sensitive, leaving farmers with little room for error when it comes to climate adaptation.

The start of the second week of the Glasgow Climate Change Conference marked a shift to a more political phase of the conference. Ministers arrived, former US President Barack Obama drew a crowd, and negotiations continued.

IFAD today announced support for a new US$67.43 million investment programme that seeks to increase productivity and rural incomes for 78,000 vulnerable rural households in Zimbabwe.

“Nature-based solutions” (NbS) might sound like a buzzword, but these techniques are some of the most effective tools in our arsenal against the effects of climate change.

As changing climates affect farming conditions across the world, how can geospatial and remote sensing tools help IFAD and others decide on where adaptation investments are best needed and what impact these interventions will have?

A new US$143 million investment programme will ensure millions of the most at-risk rural people living in the Sahel region of West Africa can adapt to climate change, with a wide-reaching plan to restore degraded land and provide climate information systems and agricultural insurance. The announcement was made today at the UN climate change conference (COP26) during a signing ceremony of the grant agreement between IFAD and the Green Climate Fund (GCF).

Sweden today signalled its strong commitment to help some of the world’s poorest small-scale farmers to adapt to climate change, by pledging SEK100 million (nearly US$11.7 million) to IFAD. The announcement was made at the UN climate change conference (COP26) in Glasgow.  

Nature-based solutions is a concept that highlights the fact that people can proactively protect, manage or restore natural ecosystems, while significantly contributing to addressing six major challenges: climate change, food security, water security, human health, disaster risk, and social and economic development.

The fisheries and aquaculture sectors fully or partially support the livelihoods of 10–12 per cent of the world’s population. Yet fisheries across the world are under threat from climate change and over-exploitation. The question of how best to manage fisheries under these conditions is a complex one, but in our experience, bringing communities into inclusive governance structures is an indispensable part of the solution.

IFAD Goodwill Ambassadors, Idris and Sabrina Elba attended COP26 to help ensure that African farmers are not left out of the climate conversation and to promote greater investments for small-scale farmers and producers to adapt to climate change.

We would like to invite you to our in-person media briefing on Saturday, 6 November at 11:00-11:30 GMT with IFAD and Conservation International on the importance of investing in small-scale agriculture, climate adaptation and nature-based solutions to achieve sustainable and prosperous food systems.

As climate negotiations enter a crucial phase, Idris and Sabrina Elba, UN Goodwill Ambassadors for IFAD, will attend COP26 to advocate for increased investments to help small-scale farmers to adapt to climate change and to protect biodiversity.

IFAD believes rural economies and food systems have the potential to become more resilient, sustainable, inclusive – and productive – all at the same time. But to get there, we need to focus our attention and support on the people who make these systems work.

On 1 November 2021, the French Development Agency (AFD) and IFAD will sign a €7 million grant agreement to support the implementation of the project “Resilience of Organizations for Transformative Smallholder Agriculture” (ROOTS). The project aims to improve food security, nutrition and smallholder farmers’ resilience to climate change in The Gambia.