The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) announces $14-million grant funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for UNDP’s Insurance and Risk Finance Facility to enhance the financial resilience of smallholder farmers in five countries in Africa and Asia, while also building a global platform that acts as a catalyst for increased collaboration, partnerships and resources.

Under the five-year project, UNDP will drive partnerships to develop agricultural insurance products that help farmers to adapt and build resilience to floods, droughts, storms, pests and disease outbreaks, all of which are exacerbated by climate change.

This agreement comes at an apt and critical moment. Agriculture is the primary income source for one in three people worldwide of which three in four people live in extreme poverty. In most developing countries, agriculture generates more than a quarter of the gross domestic product and employs over half of the population. Small-scale farmers are highly vulnerable as they are often informal or subsistence workers who lack access to social protection. While the climate summit COP27 formally recognized the need to scale up the implementation of best practices, innovations and technologies that increase resilience and sustainable production in agricultural systems, according to national circumstances in an inclusive and participatory way, the vulnerability of smallholder farmers, and the countries that depend on them, was emphasized time and again in the UNFCCC draft decision on Joint work on implementation of climate action on agriculture and food security. The new partnership between UNDP and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation represents a further stride forward in building the long-term resilience of smallholder farmers.

“The grant funding from the Bill and Melinda Foundation will allow UNDP’s Insurance and Risk Finance Facility to facilitate smallholder farmers’ adaptation to climate change by delivering and scaling agricultural insurance solutions. Farmers harvests and livelihoods are facing ever stronger impacts from climate change and insurance solutions will help build the financial resilience of families and communities and lift people out of poverty,” says UNDP Insurance and Risk Finance Facility's head, Jan Kellett.

Investment in inclusive insurance for smallholder farmers is historically low. Whereas governments still struggle to scale up programmes that protect and secure the investments in agriculture and livelihoods of rural households, smallholder farmers around the globe still lack access to affordable insurance solutions that allow them to face the financial impacts of climate events. These inadequacies are further heightened by the global absence of coordination and adequate investment in knowledge, research, and evidence to scale up initiatives.

UNDP will work with a diversity of stakeholders and initiatives to build partnerships, mobilizing resources that scale and deepen insurance protection in the programme countries and beyond.