THIRD WORLD NETWORK INFORMATION SERVICE ON SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE

Dear Friends and Colleagues

Report Finds Agroecology Vastly Underfunded, Calls for Change

Agroecology is increasingly recognized as crucial to build resilience and address the climate crisis. However, a recent report reveals that current finances from European and international institutions namely, the Green Climate Fund (GCF), the European Union (EU), European countries (EU Member States and others), the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP), are reinforcing conventional agriculture while little money goes to agroecology, making the shift difficult to attain.

This is happening in a context where Public Private Partnerships (PPP) and ‘blending’ finance – mechanisms which rely on partnerships with private sector companies and financial actors – have multiplied but have focused on industrial agriculture, seriously raising questions about their benefits for smallholders.

The report concludes: “As it is clear that food systems need to be profoundly transformed in order to address the crises we face, the current financial architecture also needs to be designed and equipped to support such radical transformation”. It makes several recommendations in this regard. The conclusion and recommendations of the report are reproduced below.

With best wishes,

Third World Network
131 Jalan Macalister
10400 Penang
Malaysia
Email: twn@twnetwork.org
Websites: http://www.twn.my/and http://www.biosafety-info.net/
To subscribe to other TWN information services: www.twnnews.net

———————————————————————————————————-

FINANCE FOR AGROECOLOGY: MORE THAN JUST A DREAM?
An assessment of European and international institutions’ contributions to food system transformation

CIDSE Policy Briefing
30 Sept. 2020
https://www.cidse.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/CIDSE-Agroecology-and-Finance-Briefing-Sept-2020-1.pdf

[EXCERPTS ONLY]

Conclusions

As prominent public investors, the Green Climate Fund, European countries, EU Member States and the European Union have the potential to play a big role in supporting the transformation of our food systems. Based on the current situation, the room for improvement is huge.

• Our findings all highlight a lack of support for transformative and holistic interventions which do not reflect the objectives and the urgency set by both the SDGs and the Paris Agreement.
• Nonetheless, an important part of the Belgium ODA channelled towards non-governmental organisations as of the Swiss-funded agricultural research for development projects and 8 GCF projects have shown to be supportive of transformative agroecology. Such cases should be investigated further and the lessons learned used to scale up support for an agroecological transition.
• As it is clear that food systems need to be profoundly transformed in order to address the crises we face, the current financial architecture also needs to be designed and equipped to support such radical transformation.

Recommendations

Based on the key findings of this research we recommend that European countries, the EU, UN Rome-based agencies and the Green Climate Fund:

• Redirect investments and finance towards agroecology and end funding of projects which are detrimental to the transformation of food systems towards greater sustainability and social justice;
• When the evidence is available, identify which projects have a transformative potential, review them and identify ways to increase funding for such type of projects;
• When the evidence is not available, undertake an analysis of governmental or institutional financial flows to assess their contributions to a transition towards agroecology;
• Increase the funding for agroecological projects and programmes by: using an assessment tool that includes the principles of agroecology to develop and select future agriculture projects; developing agroecological criteria in funding proposals;
• Focus on supporting farmer organisations and local NGOs that are accountable to smallholder farmers – especially those focusing on agroecology – and who have been shown to be more inclusive, systematic and to take a more transformative approach;
• Support the creation by the public sector of an enabling environment for smallholders’ investments in agriculture, taking into account the fact that farmers are the primary investors in agriculture;
• Review the financing mechanisms in order to decrease the number of intermediaries; maintain grants as a primary source of finance; remove complex requirement to access funds; decrease the minimum size of funds so that local organisations can easily access them; decentralise access to funding.