Africa Climate Week 2019 was marked from 18 to 22 March at the Accra International Conference Centre in Ghana on the theme: Climate action in Africa, a race we can win.
The event brought together over 2000 people from governments, private sector, development partners, donors, researchers, civil society and farmers’ organisations. The event raised awareness and shared knowledge to investors to buy into the country's National Determined Contributions (NDCs).
IFAD with the African Union Commission (AUC), the Global Resilience Partnership (GRP), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and others, under the Marrakesh Partnership on Global Climate Action, organized a one day event on Stepping up action on building climate resilient agriculture and food systems in Africa. The aim was to identify opportunities climate action on agriculture and food systems that can feed into the UNSG 2019 Climate Summit and COP25.
A dialogue between participants from the public, private, donor, academia and civil society, smallholders was organized through six parallel sessions:
1. Role of climate risk analysis for evidence-based Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) and National Adaptation Programs (NAP) implementation – from planning to action for resilient farmers' livelihoods
2. Nature-based solutions – Africa's agriculture and foods system powered by nature
3. Colliding climate and conflict risks in fragile and vulnerable contexts
4. Scaling up private sector investment that builds resilience in agriculture
5. Nature-based Solutions: Large Scale Restoration and Agroforestry for building resilience - lessons from Africa
6. Early warning – early action and forecast-based financing
IFAD was represented at the event by Romina Cavatassi, Lead Technical Specialist Environment and Climate and Yawo Jonky Tenou, Task Manager of Integrated Approach Programme on fostering sustainability and resilience for food security in sub-Saharan Africa.
Romina Cavatassi presented IFAD's approach and experience in addressing smallholder farmers' resilience. She highlighted that risk analysis and impact assessments are key components of IFAD's operations through project design and implementation processes. She emphasized IFAD's work on mainstreaming climate change and gender into country development strategies and plans in agriculture.
Recommendations from the panel discussions:
1. Make a link between science policy and farmers, to bring all stakeholders together to design risk-informed adaptation actions
2. Share data on climate change impacts and adaptation needs and effectively disseminate research findings across all levels: make results and lessons learned from evidence, impact assessments and research readily available for policy making for project up-scaling
3. Make the business case for adaptation: create incentives show economic potential of making farming systems climate resilient
4. Create an enabling environment for farmers to implement adaptation strategies and to have access to risk insurance.
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