CGIAR through CCAFS

Institution

The CGIAR through CCAFS seeks to catalyze positive change towards climate-smart agriculture (CSA), food systems and landscapes, by playing a major role in bringing to scale practices and technologies that enable agriculture to meet triple goals of food security, adaptation, and mitigation, through a portfolio of research projects in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. CCAFS is led by the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT.
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sustainable finance

CCAFS and the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT are currently working with public and private partners in blending public and private finance to achieve climate-smart agriculture objectives while meeting the risk-return profile of different investors. We also seek to finance the transformation to low-carbon and resilient global food systems in the framework of the Transforming Food Systems Under a Changing Climate initiative. With these two objectives in mind, we have proposed sustainable finance solutions to create new business models and opportunities at scale. 
The sustainable finance at the CGIAR is an area in which we do research for development to inform climate-smart investments that deliver transformational impact through nature-based solutions, climate-smart food systems, etc. The goal is to harness science and innovation to reorient and leverage capital flows towards sustainable investments that transform food, land, and water systems. To this end, three strategies have been proposed to achieve this objective: design innovative investment solutions and vehicles to catalyze private capital; scale scientific innovation and accelerate the digital revolution; and use market intelligence on sustainable finance for food, land, and water systems’ transformation.

Climate adaptation

CCAFS uses the concept of climate-smart agriculture to structure its approach to climate-responsive options. This approach seeks to address the interlinked challenges of food security and climate change and aims for three objectives: sustainably increasing agricultural productivity, to support equitable increases in farm incomes, food security and development; adapting and building resilience of agricultural and food security systems to climate change at multiple levels; and reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. 
CCAFS has developed together with its partners a diversity of participatory approaches, methods and tools that aim for identifying the trade-offs and co-benefits of food security and climate change. One of those approaches is the Climate-Smart Villages (CSVs) where we identify the context-specific technologies and supporting measures that will help smallholder farmers and other stakeholders from the territory to build resilience by addressing the relationship between climate change and agriculture, improving food security for the poor and reducing food waste, studying the relationship between agriculture and poverty, and reducing agricultural emissions. The scientific evidence generated from the CSV approach is key to informing the design of multi-scale investments. This evidence also allows us to identify investees & projects that are solving critical challenges in developing countries and emerging markets and match them to the risk-return profiles of investors.  

Digital tools

The CGIAR through CCAFS and the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT work in sustainable finance has focused on using CGIAR's scientific evidence that allows us to reorient and leverage capital flows towards sustainable investments. In this regard we are currently working on a climate-smart credit scoring tool to support SME financing in East Africa, this work is led by the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT. We are developing an end-to-end automatized solution for climate smart due diligence and portfolio management for fund investees. This risk assessment tool includes climate risks, production risks and natural resources risks for targeted commodities and value chains.
We have also provided technical assistance of MFI’s and smallholders in Latin America for a climate smart smallholder adaptation fund of USD 30m. For this study, we developed portfolios of adaptation measures that support smallholder farmers to increase their agricultural productivity / resilience. Finally, CCAFS climate change risk data was translated into a climate change hotspot indicator to inform the underwriting of loans to producers’ organizations.

Goals

As part of the Transforming Food Systems Under a Changing Climate initiative, CCAFS and its partners aim to provide a set of strategies and a detailed roadmap on how to finance the transformation of food systems. More specifically, one of the actions we propose in this initiative was to "unlock US$320 billion in public and private capital per year to realize business opportunities in the implementation of the SDGs". Our goal is to transformation to low-carbon and climate-resilient food systems that meet global food needs, the SDGs, and the objectives of the Paris Agreement, and we firmly believe that this could be achieved through the initiatives like Scale for Resilience. In this sense, we are pledged to the goals set forth in this initiative: to make 3 million farmers and rural communities more resilient to climate change, through the deployment of US$5 billion via 100 MFI’s. 
With a holistic perspective on food systems, smallholder farmers are in our core work, that is why we develop participatory and inclusive approaches to scale climate-smart options for them to increase their incomes, have better diets, and reduce their vulnerability to climate change. We believe that through Scale for Resilience we can generate new scientific evidence to innovate in sustainable finance.

Products or projects that exemplifies adaptation actions

CCAFS Latin America and the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT work has been to provide robust science and capacity building to a variety of stakeholders for reducing the climate vulnerabilities of food systems. We have been working in generating robust evidence on climate-smart agriculture (CSA) to inform programs and investments from a diverse range of stakeholders. This has been done through for example the Climate-Smart Villages (CSV) approach. 
CCAFS jointly with partners and farmers have co-develop, tested, and evaluated different agricultural practices and technologies, as well as access to climate services. The co-development, testing and assessment of CSA practices are carried out in the CSVs. Monitoring and evaluation results from CSV have shown that practices such as organic compost, climate-smart home gardens, drought-resistant seeds, and water harvesting have improved farmers’ incomes, increased productivity, improved food security, and been less affected by climate, among other perceived effects.
The implementation of practices and technologies that help to improve productivity and food security, increase adaptation, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. On the other hand, the access to climate services has allowed farmers and rural families to improve their adaptive capacity, and they are able to plan their crops, decided what varieties to plant and when by using local agroclimatic forecasts.