IFAD Climate Finance Loan 2019-2021

This project represents Canada’s 150-million-dollar unconditional repayable contribution (URC) – a loan – to the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) for climate finance that is aimed at supporting climate-smart agriculture in developing countries. This contribution supports IFAD’s full environmental and climate mainstreaming agenda whose overarching goal is to strengthen the environmental sustainability and climate resilience of rural people to overcome poverty and achieve food security. The purposes of this loan are: (1) to support IFAD’s provision of loans to eligible Member States in line with IFAD’s commitment to ensure that its Programme of Loans and Grants is climate-focused; and (2) to support gender mainstreaming and gender-transformative projects. Project activities include: (1) expanding IFAD’s support to smallholder farmers particularly women; and (2) promoting farming practices adapted to climate change and adoption of technologies and practices which help reduce the carbon footprint from agricultural systems. This project is designed to enable poor populations to adapt to the effects of climate change as well as reduce greenhouse gas emissions. .

The expected outcomes for this project include: (1) increased resilience of 24 million people; (2) reduction by sequestration and/or avoidance of greenhouse gas emission; (3) increased adoption of gender-responsive environmentally sustainable and adaptive technologies by vulnerable groups and individuals; (4) increased poor rural people’s access to natural resources; and (5) increased capacity of people particularly women to use and control environmentally sustainable technologies infrastructure and practices.