Building Farming Communities’ Financial Resilience to Drought and Desertification

COP29 Side-event Hosted by IsDB and UNDP 4th December, 2024 ⏐ 11:00 – 12:30 GMT+3 ⏐ UNDP Pavillion, Blue Zone

Agriculture, farmers and farming communities are the backbone of country growth and stability, delivering jobs, growth, innovation and investment, and provide the necessary food and products for many of our most critical supply chains. These communities are, however, on the frontline of a toxic set of risk and shock, much of it driven by significantly growing levels of drought, desertification and land degradation. Yet in developing countries in particular, the vast majority of farmers (especially smallholders) and the small and medium enterprises they work with, are entirely lacking in financial resilience.

Event Objectives: 

• Highlight the urgent need to build financial resilience as a frontline defense against the intensifying threat of desertification, accelerating land degradation and compounding climate vulnerabilities.
• As desertification endangers arable land and disrupts local food systems, the session will explore how adaptive finance solutions, including agricultural insurance and Takaful, an Islamic alternative to mutual insurance, can serve as essential tools for smallholder farmers, rural communities, climate-sensitive businesses and government to withstand the impacts of land degradation.
• Explore how financial resilience protects farmers and farming communities in a world of rising risk, hazard and shock, and enables farmers to invest in sustainable practices, adopt regenerative land management, and access critical resources, fostering local climate adaptation even in the face of shrinking arable land and deteriorating ecosystems.

Bringing together experts from the development sector, private industry, and government, the event will underscore the central role each sector plays in advancing adaptive finance for farmers and communities on the frontlines of desertification and drought. Practical, evidence-based approaches to financing and insurance for smallholder farmers from Africa and Asia will be showcased, highlighting the imperative of collaborative public-private efforts in building long-term resilience for those hardest hits by land degradation.

The event will also present key highlights from the recently released UNDP, ISDB, ISDBI report, Building Climate Resilience through Takaful Part 2: Developing Takaful Market Systems which advocates for the creation of a Global Takaful Alliance. The Alliance is a public-private partnership to build Takaful markets and products with the goal of enhancing the financial resilience of 100 million people by 2030 to rising risks, including desertification. 

Event Format: This session will feature welcoming remarks and a keynote followed by panel of experts from the development community, private sector, and government to discuss financial tools and strategies to combat desertification and enhance climate adaptation for vulnerable communities. Following the panel, there will be a short presentation on the report Insuring a Sustainable Future: Building Climate Resilience through Takaful Part 2: Developing Takaful Market Systems by IsDB, IsDBI, and UNDP.