Farm Africa emphasises importance of equitable climate finance at New York Climate Week

Farm Africa was pleased to join forces with global law firm, White & Case to host a panel discussion on climate finance at New York Climate Week.

The event, held on 25 September, highlighted the urgent need for equitable access to climate finance for all countries, with particular emphasis on the importance of global climate finance reaching smallholder farmers across eastern Africa.

The panel featured experts including Farm Africa’s Chief Executive Dan Collison, Farm Africa’s Head of Technical team Dr Diana Onyango, Farm Africa’s Ethiopia Director Shewit Emmanuel and Secretary General at Botanic Gardens Conservation International Dr Paul Smith. The panel was moderated by Seth Kerschner, Partner at White & Case.

Discussions and an audience Q&A addressed how challenges such as global food security, climate resilience, poverty reduction and gender equality depend on climate finance reaching small-scale farmers.

Smallholder farmers, who often rely on rain-fed agriculture, are bearing the brunt of the climate crisis, with very little support to adapt to extreme weather events.

Access to finance, alongside the right inputs and climate-smart agriculture training, can help farmers increase their yields by three times, and their household incomes by 50% even in the face of climate change.

With higher productivity, there is less need to expand farming land, which reduces deforestation and therefore carbon emissions. What’s more, investment in climate-smart agriculture empowers smallholder farmers to protect the environment and restore biodiversity.

The Farm Africa team shared learnings from the organisation’s experience working with communities across eastern Africa to develop climate-resilient livelihoods that restore and protect biodiversity. Examples included recent work in Ethiopia to restore degraded rangelands.

“Having a world renowned expert like Paul Smith join us to share his insights and experience on these types of projects is especially exciting. The Firm is honoured to be part of this event, and I hope it helps Farm Africa and others access funding and achieve investor confidence in financing projects, which is an important part of enhancing climate change mitigation and adaptation ambition and results”, said White & Case partner, Seth Kerschner.

Farm Africa Chief Executive Dan Collison said, “Climate changes issues are really important to Farm Africa and the farmers that we work with in eastern Africa because of how quickly climate extremes are impacting livelihoods in eastern Africa.”

This event was held as part of New York Climate Week, an annual event that promotes climate action and champions change across more than 600 activities in the city of New York.

US donors can donate to Farm Africa USA at: www.farmafrica.org/climateweek.