Finance to fight climate change needs agri focus

Under a pledge made in 2009 in Copenhagen, the rich countries are supposed to give $100-billion annually to poor nations from 2020. This money is to be used in climate change mitigation. The 38 developed countries — who had signed the vow back then — on Tuesday said that they were “confident” of meeting the target.
There was initial controversy over the sourcing of the funds. However, now that row has been settled. It is the governments which are essentially providing this money. Pledges made in 2015 alone would boost public finance from $41 billion in 2013-14 to $67 billion in 2020, points out a recent report released by the countries who committed $100 billion in 2009.
But is $100 billion adequate? Won’t this money fall short to implement the wide range of plans? The national plans envisaged in the Paris Agreement —which aims to cut global warming to under two degrees Celsius — will require trillions of dollars to be implemented. Besides, a Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report estimates the cost of funding smallholder farmers in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia to be around $210 billion per year. This funding can support smallholder farmers to seek innovative technology that will help in reducing the damage to their crops from climate change.
When $210 billion annually is needed only for transformation of agriculture systems in some regions of the globe, the pledge of $100 billion sounds too insufficient.
In its findings, the FAO warns that climate change could render 122 million more people poor by 2030. Therefore, it is necessary that steps are taken to adopt policies that mitigate climate change and alleviate poverty too. These smart strategies call for huge investments through public finance.
As money is pumped into various urban projects to tackle global warming and climate change, there is an urgent need to revolutionize agriculture sector and break the vicious cycle of poverty. Climate change hits farmers, they lose yield. Plummeting production gives rise to poverty and poverty leads to hunger. This aggravates the whole problem.
Food insecurity caused by climate change poses a big challenge to scientists today. Agriculture needs a technological push. New technologies must come to the aid of farmers. While farmers adopt these modern technologies, simple practices like planting nitrogen-efficient, drought-resistant and heat-tolerant crops will ensure food security. Water conservation and innovation has to be placed at the core of all agricultural policies.
There has to be a radical shift in conventional agricultural methods and agricultural systems have to be become sustainable. The real challenge is to discover technologies that increase crop yields while protecting the ecology and check climate change impact.
The fight against climate change has gained momentum. Deals after deals are being struck to help humanity adopt adaptibility in order to weather the impending crisis. Climate finance is a commendable initiative. But it will go waste if it is channelized in a wrong manner and without a proper foresight.