On December 1, local time, Bill & Melinda Gates** and the United Arab Emirates announced a joint investment of $200 million to accelerate innovation and help smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia become more resilient and adapt to climate change.
Bill Gates, co-chair of Bill Gates, made the announcement at the World Climate Action Summit. Gates called for agriculture to be elevated to a priority for the Global Climate Finance Initiative and supported the work of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).
The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) is the world's largest publicly funded agricultural research organization. This week, the group unveiled a three-year investment plan that aims to raise $4 billion by 2027 to make climate-resilient innovation reach 500 million farmers by 2030 and reduce carbon emissions from agriculture by one billion tons per year, which is equivalent to eliminating carbon emissions from more than 200 million vehicles.
More than 60 percent of the population in sub-Saharan Africa depends on agriculture for food and income, and the region is responsible for only 4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. In recent years, there has been a surge in extreme weather events, including droughts in East Africa and floods in West Africa, which have affected both food crops and livestock production, slowing economic growth and exacerbating income inequality between these and rich countries. While there are many innovations that can help smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, less than 2% of global climate finance is used to meet their needs.
"We are well positioned to rapidly scale up proven innovations that are already helping farmers in vulnerable regions such as Africa and South Asia to meet the challenges posed by climate change, including providing more improved varieties of stress-resistant crops such as cassava and millet, scaling up new tools and strategies used by farmers to restore degraded land and support healthier ecosystems, and providing long-term climate to help farmers** and coping with extreme weather and variable rainfall patterns. ”（