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Leaders attending COP28 in Dubai have been urged to create a fund dedicated to smallholder farmers for adaptation to climate change. 

With the fund present, the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) says farmers will have to embrace processes and practices that can moderate potential damages associated with climate change.

In an interview with Donal Brown, the associate vice-president of the programme management department on Thursday said failure for small holder farmers to have adaptation funds, there will be limited production of food.

He gave an example of COVID-19 that disrupted the supply chains of all items including food, which was made worse by the war in Ukraine and Russia; which he said acted as a wakeup call around the world for increased production. While leaders were coming to terms with the war and COVID 19, negative effects of climate change continued to manifest in different food producing countries including Uganda, he added.

“It is important for the world to wake up to it, first through COP28 which is advocating for sustainable food systems transformation. If we are to feed this world, we need to adapt to the changes of climate change, to ensure that we can actually continue to produce the food needed. So it is really key to consider small scale farmers in terms of financing,” Brown said.

Areas where farmers should look out for adaptation fund, according to Brown is the Green Climate fund, supervised by IFAD to support projects that support small holder farmers adapt to climate change in countries including Uganda.

“We support countries like Uganda to put projects forward for green climate fund, to bring in that sort of financing but also the global environment facility adaptation fund which we believe when accessed can transform agriculture in Uganda,” he added.

He, however, added that for farmers to access these funds, bureaucracies have to be streamlined to make access to these funds easier.

Brown explained further that at COP28, the fund for loss and damage was launched followed by pledges from host countries and other development partners. However, the problem with climate finance is that something like 95% or more was for mitigation and not for adaptation, agriculture would only get like 1.5% of all climate finance which he said should change.

“At COP28 our main signal is to see investment in adaptation starting with the loss and damage one for sustainable food systems. In many countries, food is produced by small holder farmers, so we shall be calling for more funding for small holder farmers who feed the nations. You can’t the world have food security without putting money into adaptation and that is what we will be saying,” he added.

It estimated that delegates from over 200 countries have converged in Dubai for the COP28 climate conference, aimed at fast tracking the transition to clean energy and the future.