Agency Response: Operationalizing USAID's Climate Strategy to Achieve Transformative Adaptation and Mitigation in Agricultural and Food Systems

USAID RESPONSE TO BIFAD RECOMMENDATIONS

On October 21, 2024, USAID Administrator Samantha Power shared an Agency response to recommendations outlined in BIFAD’s Operationalizing USAID's Climate Strategy to Achieve Transformative Adaptation and Mitigation in Agricultural and Food Systems report. A BIFAD subcommittee spent more than a year developing the report, which presented six operational recommendations and targets for climate adaptation, mitigation, and finance in agrifood systems. BIFAD’s recommendations were intended to accelerate USAID’s achievement of its ambitious Climate Strategy goals specific to agrifood systems programming. The report was formally transmitted to Administrator Power on November 17, 2023. 

USAID technical staff from both environment and agriculture worked closely together to understand the thinking and implications of BIFAD’s recommendations and considered if and how best to implement them. The response outlines where USAID’s current work aligns with the recommendations and what commitments the Agency will undertake to facilitate transformations in agriculture and food systems in ways that also advance climate adaptation and mitigation. Responding to BIFAD’s recommendations and proposed targets, USAID offered the following high-level insights:

• USAID is incorporating climate-related targets in its agriculture and food systems portfolio while exploring ways to track agriculture and food systems contributions to the Climate Strategy (Recommendation 1). The Agency outlines expected contributions through Climate Action Plans (Bureaus) and Climate Change Annex updates (Missions). 
  • USAID is committed to set a methane mitigation subtarget for agrifood systems by December 2025.   
  • USAID agrees that there is a benefit to having an adaptation target across the Agency’s agriculture and food systems efforts. USAID recently set a new Feed the Future (FTF) initiative-level adaptation target of 7.8 million cultivated hectares under climate adaptation or climate risk-management practices and technologies by 2030 as a result of U.S. government assistance. USAID may also be in a position to commit in the future to a target related to poverty reduction and in 2025 will evaluate how to leverage modeling to identify improved resilience and poverty reduction for specific populations.  
  • The Agency will leverage investments in the climate-smart agriculture sector as well as current programming and policies to balance global needs with an agriculture and food systems finance target.   

• USAID promotes climate mainstreaming as a central component of the Agency’s Climate Risk Management for USAID projects and activities and encourages more integrated programming to achieve multiple co-benefits (Recommendation 2). The Agency supports the use of climate data to strengthen activity design and implementation. 

• USAID is strengthening the climate capacity of staff through training and on-the-job support and is exploring ways to further strengthen the integration of climate into agriculture and food systems-related activities (Recommendation 3). Moving forward, the Agency will focus on hiring and training staff (e.g., through a new agriculture and climate course) who will support integration across technical areas and strengthen staff capacity in reporting adaptation and mitigation outcomes. 

• The Agency is taking steps to mobilize climate finance and structure funding strategically through co-funded initiatives and phased approaches (Recommendation 4). Moving forward, USAID will work to improve communications to encourage building climate action and results into the design of agriculture and food systems programs. 

• USAID is taking steps to integrate climate adaptation and mitigation more fully in the Feed the Future research portfolio (Recommendation 5), particularly through the 2022–2026 U.S. government’s Global Food Security Research Strategy, which advocates for developing and promoting inclusive and equitable uptake of climate-smart technologies, practices, and policies that promote adaptation, reduce emissions intensity, and help conserve natural resources. 

• USAID is committed to investing resources in high-potential leverage points within agriculture and food systems that drive transformative shifts to net-zero emissions and climate-resilient pathways while achieving Agency food security goals (Recommendation 6). This commitment includes strategic implementation of the Agency’s key policies with global significance.