Press release: Cooperatives in Agriculture have solutions for Climate Change

26-11-2020

Kees Blokland, General Manager of Agriterra, and Juan Lucas Restrepo, Director General of The Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT (CGIAR), signed a Memorandum of Understanding online to join forces.

Agriculture stands at the crossroads: it has to produce more food for a growing world population, secure decent income for farmers, including women and youth, while adapting to climate change, protecting biodiversity and reducing emissions and pollution. This requires the whole agricultural sector to become substantially more productive and sustainable. Agriterra puts trust in international cooperation among cooperatives to effectuate the required systemic change of increasing production and environmental efficiency. 

Over the past year, Agriterra implemented a targetted approach to select and strengthen cooperatives in their business development and link them successfully to financial institutions. Now there is need for an add-on to support cooperatives in becoming climate clever. Agriterra and the Alliance decided to join forces in a strategic partnership to build on each others strength combining solid business development with scientific proven climate solutions.

“For cooperative business development and climate action on scale, the combination of the Alliance with Agriterra will change the game”, says Kees Blokland.

The Alliance expertise on climate change and sustainable food systems offers cooperatives access to effective climate smart solutions. Agriterra’s cooperative network and business approach makes Agriterra a strong partner to scale up the roll-out climate smart approaches while working on economic strong businesses. By joining forces, both organizations maximize their impact in building resilience to climate change, mitigating negative impacts, and make farmers adapt in a way that it increases their agricultural productivity, economical sustainability and access to finance.

“It is not only working in the nexus of agriculture, food, and enviroment but it is really understanding that we need to address livelihoods equities and social justice. It is clear that this collaboration goes in this direction and the organizations complent each other”, says Juan Lucas Restrepo, Director General of the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT.

A joint concept has been developed for building a pipeline of bankable climate resilient cooperatives. Capitalising on each other know-how, expertise and track record, cooperatives will be provided with a complete and credible package of solutions from pre-investment design and co-development of sustainable business models to technical assistance to accompany their transition. “Co-developing solutions between public and private sector can make a considerable impact in improving the environment, biodiversity and social development,” says Gianpiero Menza, Private Sector and Sustainable Finance Officer at the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT.

“Together we can build climate resilient, bankable cooperatives!”, assure Harm Haverkort, Agriterra country representive Vietnam and Godefroy Grosjean, Global Lead Advisory Services for Sustainable Finance.

Kees Blokland, General Manager of Agriterra, and Juan Lucas Restrepo, Director General of The Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT (CGIAR)
 

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The Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT is a global research-for-development organization and works with multiple partners to deliver research-based solutions that harness agricultural biodiversity and sustainably transform food systems to improve people’s lives. The Alliance is a CGIAR center headquartered in Rome and brings together more than 1200 staff with operational presence in more than 50 countries and 30 country offices.
www.bioversityinternational.org/alliance/

Agriterra is the international specialist in cooperative development. Agriterra works in more than 25 countries and support around 360 cooperatives  and reach almost 1,18 million farmers worldwide, strengthening farmer ownership and stimulating economic growth of cooperatives with their expertise, built upon over a century of cooperative development experience.
www.agriterra.org

For further information about this press release:

Agriterra
Harm Haverkort, Agriterra country representive Vietnam
Email: haverkort@agriterra.org

Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT (CGIAR)
Godefroy Grosjean, Global Lead Advisory Services for Sustainable Finance
Email: g.grosjean@cgiar.org