About UNEP’s Land Use Finance Programme
Halting the loss of the more than seven million hectares of tropical forests that disappear annually, tackling climate change, while growing sustainable agricultural production to feed the estimated nine billion people that will be on the planet by 2050, are among the most defining challenges of the 21st century. At present, the global community is not on track to meet the Paris climate agreement to hold global temperature well below 2 degrees Celsius rise this century, and to drive efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Whether the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals’ objectives can be achieved by 2030 is dependent on the way agricultural land and forests – and more broadly our global food systems - are managed in the years to come. There is a growing global consensus about the need for a sizable shift in those economic sectors that contribute to climate change, including agricultural value chains and its financing.
To pioneer the transformation towards sustainable land use at scale,
UN Environment Programme (UNEP)
launched a new 4-year
Land Use Finance Programme
. Managed by the
Climate Finance Unit (CFU)
, this programme aims to proactively unlock public and especially private capital for deforestation-free commodity production, restoration of degraded land and improvement of smallholder farmer livelihoods.
This will be done by setting up or supporting several complementary finance facilities that blend public and private capital to catalyse private finance that delivers positive environmental and social impact. Examples of such facilities include the Tropical Landscapes Finance Facility (in Indonesia), the AGRI3 Fund, &Green Fund and the Responsible Commodities Facility. In addition, the programme will work with member states directly to create enabling environments for sustainable land use, including by providing analyses and options for reform of fiscal and trade policies.
