Display at the Climate Finance: Delivering Climate Solutions Through Agrifood Systems exhibit, FAO headquarters, Rome. Photo by Piedad Martín
By: Edoardo Corriere, YPARD Policy and Programs Coordinator
I arrived at the FAO headquarters in Rome in September, expecting a finance meeting. What I found at the 2025 Forum of the UNFCCC Standing Committee on Finance felt more like a translation exercise between technical language and lived reality.
As one co-chair said, “We often speak in terms that many people working on the ground won’t understand.” The tension between the systems that move money and the communities that need it underpinned every session.
This year’s forum focused on financing climate-resilient food systems and agriculture. It gathered ministers, representatives from multilateral funds and development banks, farmers’ organizations, Indigenous leaders, researchers and youth.
The core message was simple and uncomfortable: Agriculture is central to climate action, yet smallholders, pastoralists, fishers, youth, women and Indigenous Peoples remain last in line for climate finance.
The problem is not just “more money,” it’s how money moves
A farmer leader from the Georgian Farmers’ Association captured this paradox: farmers are on the frontline of climate impacts, yet at the back of the line for financial support.
Collateral and land tenor requirements are often misaligned with smallholder realities; due diligence and reporting are difficult and loan requirements from banks are often too large or their repayment terms are too rigid. Several speakers converged on the same solution: blend and de-risk finance.
Guarantees, first-loss capital and concessional money can incentivize local banks and micro-finance institutions (MFIs) to finance rural lending. Affordable climate risk insurance, including public, two-tier schemes, helps lenders price risk and helps farmers recover after economic shocks.
But even perfect instruments fail if they can’t reach people. That’s why the forum repeatedly returned to farmer organizations and cooperatives as necessary partners to get transparent, targeted finance to youth and women and others who aren’t part of formal banking.
As a youth delegate with Young Professionals for Agricultural Development (YPARD), I know other young people like me don’t want charity; we want bankable pathways that match how we actually farm, trade and innovate.
Inside the FAO headquarters during discussions on climate finance and agrifood systems, surrounded by delegates. Photo by Edoardo Corriere
Policy coherence is not a buzzword; it’s a pipeline
During the forum, ministers and fund representatives were blunt: financing won’t scale on a project-by-project basis. Instead, countries need policy-based, budget-linked pipelines that align Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and sector policies to then show up in annual budgets.
Several people called for country platforms that convene those working across agriculture, and finance to set priorities, structure transactions and track financial results.
Announcements leading up to COP30 emerged as Brazil spotlighted its Ecological Transformation Plan and teased RAIZ (Resilient Agriculture Implementation for net-zero land degradation). Others pointed to Paris Agreement Article 6.8 (non-market approaches) as a potential channel for agriculture and food systems. We must treat agriculture and food systems as central issues within climate policy to meet the UNFCCC Global Goal on Adaptation, as well as goals arosss sustainable financing and loss-and-damage.
Build data systems that prove outcomes
One theme surprised many in the room: models aren’t enough. As an International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) expert argued, investors will finance agriculture when projected benefits are backed by grounded evidence. That requires minimum viable datasets for each value-chain actor, better farm-level monitoring and unique geo-IDs so financiers can verify who receives what, where and with what results.
For youth and community groups, this is a chance for community-run monitoring to document adaptation gains, soil and water outcomes and incomes without surrendering data sovereignty.
Indigenous leaders were crystal clear: we are actors, not beneficiaries. Finance should fund Indigenous-led data collection and respect governance over knowledge —“nothing about us without us.”
Regional realities matter
In small island states like Fiji, food security is both terrestrial and oceanic. Their case study tied agriculture financing to coastal health, culture and agri-tourism. Pastoral systems raised different concerns: a representative from the Horn of Africa noted that livestock is a central part of their economy, yet underfinanced.
Across regions, the message was the same: no one-size-fits-all. We must tailor financial instruments, invest in literacy and meet community needs.
Following the case studies, participants at the forum divided into breakout groups focusing on different key sub-themes related to climate finance. The main takeaway from the group debates I attended was that not all public support is helpful. We debated repurposing environmentally harmful subsidies and using tools like green budgeting or sovereign climate bonds to drive transformation.
This needs to be paired with social protections so reforms don’t punish the most vulnerable. Some countries shared promising governance stories: climate-tagged budgets, inter-ministerial climate committees and negotiated pacts that recycle revenues back into the sector to enable change.
A behind-the-scenes moment inside the FAO plenary hall, capturing the energy and focus as participants prepare for another session on climate and agrifood systems. Photo by Edoardo Corriere
Youth at the table
While attending, I was wearing two hats as I was representing both YPARD and YOUNGO, the Children and Youth Constituency of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. As youth constituencies, we are not neutral observers; many of us are farmers/ growers, agro-entrepreneurs or community organizers.
This vantage point sharpened our reading of the forum. When panelists talked about “access,” we thought of the application forms that often stall our work. When speakers praised insurance, we pictured payouts that arrive after debts are due. When they said “pipeline,” we saw the WhatsApp groups where youth compare notes on micro-loans and broken tractors.
Yet we also saw openings. The forum’s most pragmatic ideas — direct-access windows through cooperatives and local lenders, youth-focused readiness for proposal coaching and financial literacy, open sub-national tracking of who gets funded — came from a coalition of farmers, Indigenous leaders and youth who refused to accept business-as-usual.
These are not romantic slogans. They are implementable design choices.
Notable risks
Two risks kept surfacing – reporting fatigue and compliance. If financial requirements use corporate environmental, social governance (ESG) checklists, smallholders will walk away.
Additionally, in the rush to mobilize private capital, we may underinvest in public goods such as data, local infrastructure and affordable insurance, the things that make private investment viable in the first place.
The forum didn’t deny these tensions; it put them on the table.
The pathway forward
If readers take one message from this, let it be: access to finance is a problem of design, not a lack of money.
Here is one concrete pathway to finance smallholders that the forum’s discussions support:
- De-risk and blend finance: back loans with backing guarantees with working capital, offer simple day-to-day cash loans and revenue-based finance for smallholders and bundle affordable crop/ weather insurance
- Deliver through trusted organizations: contract farmer organizations, Indigenous institutions, local MFIs and savings groups with governance safeguards and age/gender-disaggregated reporting.
- Align policy with money: anchor agrifood priorities in NDCs/NAPs and annual budgets via country platforms that include youth, farmers and Indigenous leaders.
- Prove results locally: fund community-run monitoring, adopt geo-IDs and publish sub-national ledgers of agrifood climate finance.
As youth, we’ll keep pushing for change. And as one Indigenous youth leader reminded all at the forum, our metrics should include quality of life.
If climate finance can’t improve that for the people who grow our food, then it is not working, no matter how elegant the spreadsheets look.
Financing smallholder farmers is not charity. This is how we build resilient food systems that feed people, absorb economic and climate shocks and cut emissions.
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