The Business Advantage: Mobilizing private sector-led climate actions in agriculture

With private contributions becoming increasingly pivotal to global climate finance, it is evident that scaling up and channeling private capital is crucial in meeting the goal of achieving the Paris Agreement and limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level. In the adaptation sector, however, little quantitative information is available regarding private financing flows, because adaptation activities are often integrated into broader development operations rather than existing as stand-alone interventions. In an effort to better understand how public funds can mobilize private resources for adaptation, the amount of private finance raised in matching public investment is often used as an indicator of success. But going a step further, what would be most relevant would be to know how much impact is generated through these public-private partnerships. In the context of rural transformation, it is also important to know how such impact is delivered to the farmer households that are in most need of adaptation support. Finally, understanding how the impact is distributed across financial, social and environmental outcomes would be helpful in learning to channel private investments into adaptation actions that are both profitable and sustainable.