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CALIP focuses on building low-cost, robust village protection infrastructure that can withstand high-intensity wave action. The project also invests in developing a Flash Flood Early Warning System for saving Boro rice, which is the main crop cultivated both in protected and non-protected areas. Increasingly, IFAD-supported projects are taking climate-related threats such as storms, droughts, floods, sea-level rise and temperature extremes into account. Tools have been developed to systematically analyse climate hazards and their ‘hot spots’. These include geographic information systems (GIS) and earth observation systems to better target landscapes affected by food security, environmental degradation and climate change issues. This, in turn, helps to optimize the specification, targeting, and siting of climate-sensitive investments. A good example is the IFAD investment programme in Kyrgyzstan, where climate risk analysis has influenced the location and standards of rural roads following an analysis of current and future flash-flood risks. An important element in developing innovative strategies is to boost the capabilities of farmer-based organizations to manage climate risks. In many countries, knowledge of historical climate patterns is no longer sufficient to manage such risks. The rains no longer come when expected, extreme events are creating more damage, and new risks such as pest infestations are causing new types of problems. Examples from IFAD programmes include the development of a salinity monitoring system in Vietnam, a stronger weather station network in Mozambique, and more robust building codes for post-harvest processing and storage facilities in Rwanda. IFAD’s extensive work on natural resource management provides many examples of approaches that can be scaled up to increase the adaptive capacity of communities and their ecosystems. Examples from the IFAD portfolio include the scaling up of agroforestry systems in coffee value chains in Nicaragua, the expansion of watershed management approaches in Bolivia, and the systematic rehabilitation of mangrove greenbelts in Djibouti to protect fishing villages and marine biodiversity.An economic analysis of IFAD’s ASAP shows that, on average, climate adaptation investments yield a return of US$1.77 per dollar invested. In all regions where IFAD works, the rate of return from climate adaptation projects is significantly higher than the cost of borrowing, ranging between 15 to 35 per cent1.GETTING CLIMATE FINANCE TO RURAL PEOPLEAs important as ASAP is becoming to a large number of countries, it has become evident that developing countries require significant resources to meet the challenge of climate change. As part of the Paris Agreement, developed countries reiterated their commitment to channel at least US$100 billion in annual climate finance to developing countries by 2020. Parties also agreed to set a new, more ambitious climate finance goal prior to 2025. Additional climate finance can go a long way in helping address some of the key threats that climate change poses to the livelihoods and well-being of the most vulnerable people and communities. Among these threats are reduced crop yields, higher food prices and food insecurity. Climate finance can help smallholder farmers manage climate risks in many ways, including investing in renewable energy and early warning systems; managing agriculture, forestry and fisheries at a landscape level to ensuring more resilient systems; improving water management and enhanced genetic diversity; and promoting conservation agriculture, agroforestry and integrated food-energy systems. Climate finance also helps to strengthen local, national and global mechanisms to prepare for, respond to and support recovery from climate shocks and provide more predictable and large-scale support to food security. Channelling climate finance to the agricultural and food security sectors is vital to ensure food security and nutrition in a changing climate. However, existing flows of climate finance fall well short of these needs. This points to the need to scale up flows of climate finance to the agricultural sector, and to use climate finance in a catalytic way – to leverage additional public and private investment for productive, resilient and sustainable agricultural development.In such efforts, IFAD stands ready to help coordinate action across agricultural sub-sectors, particularly between forestry and agriculture and across the food-energy-water nexus. In Marrakech, IFAD will “IN ALL REGIONS WHERE IFAD WORKS, THE RATE OF RETURN FROM CLIMATE ADAPTATION PROJECTS IS SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER THAN THE COST OF BORROWING”Photo Credit: UN Photo/Martine Perret074 AGRICULTURE