By Brian Thomson
Paris, 5 December 2015
The German government announced today at the Soils Matters event at the UN’s Climate Summit in Paris that it is pledging €13 million to the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) to help smallholder farmers in developing countries deal with the impacts of climate change and improve their food security.
“This contribution will enable IFAD to broaden the reach of its Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture Programme (ASAP), which can be expanded into a second phase to support an additional 7 million smallholder farmers to cope with, and adapt to, the effects of climate change,” says IFAD Vice President Michel Mordasini.
“We would like to thanks the German government for this sizeable donation to our work which will enable IFAD to strengthen the climate resilience of at least 280,000 smallholder farmers.”
Poor smallholders are the group that is most exposed to the impacts of climate change.
“To eliminate rural poverty and hunger we must make sure all our programmes are climate sensitive."
Thomas Silberhorn, Parliamentary State Secretary to Germany’s Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development said that smallholder farmers are among the best possible clients for climate finance, and if we invest more and better in them we will be able to feed a growing planet while at the same time restoring degraded ecosystems and reducing agriculture's carbon footprint.
