Despite huge challenges, we reached the target of $3.5 billion loan and grant program in 2021, which was the last year of the IFAD11 replenishment. An estimated 80% of the world’s poorest and equal portion of the hungriest live the rural areas of developing countries. They are too often excluded from bigger development and financing initiatives. They are, and will always be, IFAD´s core constituency.

As the COVID crisis continued to severely impact lives and livelihoods, we also reached an estimated 4 million rural women and men with extraordinary support through IFAD’s Rural Poor Stimulus Facility. This facility, created in 2020 in direct response to the COVID crisis, has so far disbursed almost US$56 million in 60 countries.

The pandemic has rightly been the main focus of the global community. However, climate change is an ever-increasing threat to rural communities.

Small-scale producers are being hit hard by a crisis they did not create. And yet, only 1.7% of climate finance reaches them. This must change.

For example, in Bangladesh, we supported a flash flood early warning system; in Vietnam, a salinity monitoring system; in Mozambique, a stronger weather station network; and in Rwanda, stronger building codes for post-harvest processing and storage facilities.

In 2021, IFAD launched ASAP+ to provide grant-based climate finance, particularly to lower-income countries where climate change is affecting food security.

IFAD is also significantly scaling up partnerships with the three main climate funds – the Green Climate Fund, the Global Environment Facility and the Adaptation Fund.

The pandemic and climate change have starkly exposed the vulnerability of small-scale producers and the inequity that the people who produce a third of the world’s food receive only about 6 cents for every $1 of product they generate. There is no sustainability or resilience without greater equity.

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