"Climate Finance Is Failing Farmers Punished by Global Warming"

" Climate Finance Is Failing Farmers Punished\u00a0by Global Warming \r\n Filipino farmer Esther Penunia has seen her home country ravaged by heat, floods\u00a0and typhoons just this past year. She saw farmlands in water up to her chest and crops destroyed. \r\n \u201cClimate change is real,\u201d she said from the United Nations COP29 talks\u00a0in\u00a0Baku, Azerbaijan. \u201cIt\u2019s affecting our crops, our yields and therefore our incomes. Everyone is really getting hurt.\u201d \r\n Penunia, who heads the Asian Farmers\u00a0Association, has once again made her way to a COP summit to push for greater and better access to finance for small-scale farmers she\u2019s representing \u2014 so they can cope with and adapt to the erratic weather. \r\n Small family farmers grow more than a third of the world\u2019s food and up to 80% in regions like Asia and Africa. Yet just 14% of the $9.1 billion in international public climate finance for agriculture and land use was targeted at activities most relevant to them, according to an analysis by Climate Focus. That picture becomes even more distorted when you consider that less than 3% of all public climate finance goes into food systems, even though they make up about a third of the global greenhouse gas emissions. \r\n \u201cThe dollars aren\u2019t big enough; the dollars aren\u2019t catalytic enough,\u201d said Sara Farley, vice president of the global food portfolio at the Rockefeller Foundation. \u201cFood is not an elected add-on for climate, future proofing our planet. It is a requisite.\u201d \r\n After last year\u2019s COP28 summit in Dubai was seen as finally putting\u00a0food on the menu of climate talks, Baku\u2019s focus is more subdued. The organizers came under fire over the dearth of meatless options and some beef and chicken sandwiches labeled with\u00a0what appeared to be a vegetarian symbol. \r\n On the Food, Agriculture and Water Day on Tuesday, countries are expected to make a\u00a0pledge\u00a0to include targets for cutting methane from organic waste, including food. The United Nations\u2019 Food and Agriculture Organization is\u00a0soon\u00a0set\u00a0to issue a second installment of a food\u00a0roadmap to net zero. The COP29 presidency\u2019s initiatives and outcomes have outlined a so-called Harmoniya Climate Initiative for Farmers to drive finance and collaboration on agriculture. COP presidencies have announced similar plans in the past and, according to Dhanush Dinesh, who\u2019s watched\u00a017 COPs, they make little difference. \r\n \u201cInstead of spending diplomatic efforts each year creating a new initiative which makes everyone look good, the focus needs to shift to getting money, technology and capacity to farmers,\u201d said Dinesh, the founder of Clim-Eat, which works on food solutions. \u201cUltimately emissions from food systems are not decreasing and the resilience of farmers at the frontline is also not improving.\u201d \r\n Many eyes are already on next year\u2019s COP host Brazil. As an agricultural powerhouse and home to the Amazon, the world\u2019s largest land carbon sink, it\u2019s widely expected to address key aspects of food systems and the bioeconomy \u2014 from methane in livestock to nitrogen from fertilizers, and deforestation. \r\n \u201cWe\u2019re expecting a very kind of multidimensional COP that really embraces not only food, but the multiple dimensions of food from deforestation, land conversion, the social dimensions,\u201d Farley said. \r\n While Farley decided to skip Baku this year, she\u2019s already pre-planning her trip to COP30 in Bel\u00e9m, which she thinks will be too important to miss. "

"Climate Finance Is Failing Farmers Punished by Global Warming"

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