Farming generates 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions, and an “Investment Fair” on the sidelines of UN talks in the Hague aims to change that by funneling investment dollars into sustainable agriculture projects that capture carbon in soil. Three deals have already been signed to fund five projects, but more scale is needed..
Hans Hoogeveen may not have gotten everything he wanted, but he’s off to a good start.
A Professor of Practice in Natural Resource Policy, Hoogeveen also serves on the advisory board of Ecosystem Marketplace publisher Forest Trends and is the man “responsible for International and European Affairs, Agrochain, Trade, Fisheries and implementation of European Union policies” in the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture. In that capacity, he spearheaded an Investment Fair which runs through Thursday as part of the International Conference on Agriculture, Food Security, and Climate Change in the Hague.
“We need concrete results, and not just pretty words,” he said at the start of the fair. “We need new money flowing into real projects that are delivering verifiable results, and not just recycling the same government pledges for the third and fourth time.”
It’s now three days into the fair, and three deals have already been inked. Together, they put roughly $2 million into five projects that are helping poor farmers work their land in a sustainable way. More importantly for the long-term viability of the projects, they do so by harnessing carbon finance to reward farmers for adopting sustainable practices that capture carbon in the ground.
The Deals
The first deal was signed on Monday, and it’s more of a grant that promotes investment than it is an actual investment. Under it, the Rockefeller Foundation is putting $1.5 million dollars into three projects:
- the African Agricultural Climate Finance Facility (ACFF), a project of Forest Trends which is developing new transaction models to support greater investment in smallholder, farmer-driven agricultural mitigation and adaptation projects;
- the Rainforest Alliance, which is developing criteria that help small farmers adopt practices that decrease their carbon footprint and increase their climate resilience; and
- the Nature Conservation Research Centre of Ghana, which is helping small-holder cocoa farmers produce shade-grown cocoa, which supports greater long-term productivity, sequesters more carbon, and should also fetch a higher price.
The second deal was inked on Tuesday, and more closely resembles the kind of payment for ecosystem services that can bring the value of nature into the production stream. Under it, the Dutch minister for Agriculture and Foreign Trade, Henk Bleker, signed a financial commitment with the investment fund Food 4 All, which invests in smaller companies and cooperatives in East and West Africa.
The third deal was inked on Wednesday, and is a the first soil-carbon project approved in Africa. Under it, the World Bank is purchasing carbon credits from Vi Agroforestry, an NGO that has been active in Eastern Africa since 1983. The credits will be sold to the BioCarbon Fund, and the project makes it possible for small-holder farmers in Kenya to access the carbon market and receive carbon revenues through the adoption of productivity enhancing practices and technologies.
