The importance of supporting smallholders worldwide was impressed upon world leaders at the COP26 climate conference today, as climate change threatens to impact food production worldwide.
Around the world, over 500 million smallholders make up a third of global food production, many of whom are threatened by climate-change related changes to their local ecosystem.
The French-based Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centres (CGIAR) called on world leaders to protect these smallholders from climate-change induced reductions in food production, and to curb greenhouse emissions.
UK Environment Secretary George Eustice said: “To keep 1.5 degrees alive, we need action from every part of society, including an urgent transformation in the way we manage ecosystems and grow, produce and consume food on a global scale.”
CGIAR has received pledges exceeding £1 billion to identify solutions to these issues, including £55 million from the UK over two years. Other investments have come from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and countries including Sweden, Canada, the U.S, and Belgium.
“This is not an either/ or scenario where it’s adaptation or mitigation,” said Claudia Sadoff, Managing Director, Research Delivery and Impact at CGIAR. “For agriculture to become a more sustainable and nature-positive sector, we have to provide tools that allow farmers to rebalance the relationship between agriculture and nature while building resilience to climate change.”
“The investments secured at COP26 will accelerate this work, but much more is needed in the long run to fight global hunger and poverty. We must cultivate a global and truly multilateral effort to bridge the remaining investment gap, prioritize adaptation strategies and programs, and support the innovations to confront this unprecedented threat to food systems that feed billions,” said Sadoff.
CGIAR is involved in research including developing climate-resistant crop varieties such as drought-resistant wheat, which could survive global-warming induced harsher conditions in regions such as sub-Saharan Africa to combat the degradation of farmland due to climate change.
