Curated Content

This brief focuses on the challenges in making climate-smart agricultural production work for the poor, who will be the most vulnerable to climate impacts. It offers recommendations to overcome constraints, as even small management changes can have significant income and livelihood benefits.

This edition of The State of Food and Agriculture addresses Women in agriculture: closing the gender gap for development. The agriculture sector is underperforming in many developing countries, and one of the key reasons is that women do not have equal access to the resources and opportunities they need to be more productive. This report clearly confirms that the Millennium Development Goals on gender equality (MDG3) and poverty and food security (MDG1) are mutually reinforcing. We must promote gender equality and empower women in agriculture to win, sustainably, the fight against hunger and extreme poverty. I firmly believe that achieving MDG 3 canhelp us achieve MDG 1.

Climate finance fundamentals present short introductory briefings on various aspects of international climate finance, designed for readers new to this critical area. In light of the fast pace of developments in climate finance, the briefs allow the reader to gain a better understanding of the quantity and quality of financial flows going to developing countries. 

Climate finance remains central to achieving low-carbon, climate resilient development. The global climate finance architecture is complex and always evolving. Funds flow through multilateral channels – both within and outside of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Financial Mechanism – and increasingly through bilateral, as well as through regional and national climate change channels and funds. Monitoring the flows of climate finance is difficult, as there is no agreed definition of what constitutes climate finance or consistent accounting rules. The wide range of climate finance mechanisms continues to challenge coordination. But efforts to increase inclusiveness and complementarity as well as to simplify access continue.

Faced with the triple challenges of achieving food security, adapting to the impacts of climate change, and reducing emissions, agriculture has been prioritized by countries as a sector for climate action. The national process of formulating and implementing National Adaptation Plans, which gives effect to the ambitions set out in the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions of countries, is a key instrument that will not only facilitate access to resources, but also advance best practice and implementation of proven and effective adaptation actions. In order to support countries in the elaboration of their National Adaptation Plans, this paper aims to tap into agricultural research for development conducted by CGIAR Centers and research programs, to identify best bet innovations for adaptation in agriculture, which can help achieve food security under a changing climate, while also delivering co-benefits for environmental sustainability, nutrition and livelihoods.

This module provides guidance and a comprehensive menu of practical tools for integrating gender in the planning, design, implementation, and evaluation of projects and investments in climate-smart agriculture (CSA). The module emphasizes the importance and ultimate goal of integrating gender in CSA practices, which is to reduce gender inequalities and ensure that men and women can equally benefit from any intervention in the agricultural sector to reduce risks linked to climate change. Climate change has an impact on food and nutrition security and agriculture, and the agriculture sector is one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases. It is crucial to recognize that climate change affects men and women differently. The content is drawn from tested good practice and innovative approaches, with an emphasis on lessons learned, benefits and impacts, implementation issues, and replicability. These insights and lessons related to gender in CSA will assist practitioners to improve project planning, design, monitoring, and evaluation; to effectively scale up and enhance the sustainability of efforts that are already underway; or to pursue entirely different solutions. This module contains five thematic notes (TNs) that provide a concise and technically sound guide to gender integration in the selected themes. These notes summarize what has been done and highlight the success and lessons learned from projects and programs.

Climate-smart agriculture seeks to increase productivity in an environmentally and socially sustainable way, strengthen farmers' resilience to climate change, and reduce agriculture's contribution to climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing carbon storage on farmland. Climate-smart agriculture includes proven practical techniques-such as mulching, intercropping, conservation agriculture, crop rotation, integrated crop-livestock management, agroforestry, improved grazing, and improved water management-but also innovative practices such as better weather forecasting, early warning systems and risk insurance. Climate-smart agriculture fully incorporates attention to climate risk management. Climate-smart agriculture offers some unique opportunities to tackle food security, adaptation and mitigation objectives. African countries will particularly benefit from climate-smart agriculture given the central role of agriculture as a means to poverty alleviation and the major negative impacts that climate change is likely to have on the African continent.

The Global Climate Fund 101 is an online resource that assists entities interested in applying for GCF funding.

This manual was commissioned by the Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions in 2000 and remains, in 2009, the principal current central government guidance on the application of multi-criteria analysis (MCA) techniques. Since 2000 it has become more widely recognised in government that, where quantities can be valued in monetary terms, MCA is not a substitute for cost-benefit analysis, but it may be a complement; and that MCA techniques are diverse in both the kinds of problem that they address (for example prioritisation of programmes as well as single option selection) and in the techniques that they employ, ranging from decision conferencing to less resource intensive processes.

Agriculture can work in concert with other sectors to produce faster growth, reduce poverty, and sustain the environment. In this Report, agriculture consists of crops, livestock, agroforestry, and aquaculture. It does not include forestry and commercial capture fisheries because they require vastly different analyses. But interactions between agriculture and forestry are considered in the discussions of deforestation, climate change, and environmental services.

The ILO’s Impact Insurance Facility is enabling the insurance sector, governments, and their partners to embrace impact insurance to reduce households’ vulnerability, promote stronger enterprises and facilitate better public policies.