The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank, and several governments have announced financial commitments of $790 million worth assistance to enhance resilience of over 300 million small-scale food producers in the face of mounting climate impacts.
This commitment was made at the UN Climate Action Summit in New York, recently.
Climate change, which is bringing more droughts, flooding and extreme weather events, is already taking a severe toll on farmers, especially in developing countries.
The commitment follows the recently released flagship report from the Global Commission on Adaptation that calls for global leadership to accelerate adaptation. The Commission finds that investing in adaptation can yield significant economic, environmental and social benefits. The Commission is led by Ban Ki-moon, 8th Secretary General of the United Nations; Bill Gates, Co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; and Kristalina Georgieva*, CEO of the World Bank, together with 31 other Commissioners.
The commission will announce several Action Tracks as part of its “Year of Action,” which goes through 2020, including at the Global Adaptation Summit hosted by the Netherlands in October 2020. Enhancing the resilience of small-holder producers is one of the core initiatives of the commission’s track on Agriculture and Food Security.