In its role of knowledge broker in Agricultural Risk Management (ARM) for development, the Platform for Agricultural Risk Management (PARM) connected the Climate Bonds Initiative  with IFAD in 2023. Following PARM/Climate Bonds successful webinar Assessing risk in agriculture: How to mobilise global capital for financing the transition in June 2023, PARM has decided to move forward with this partnership by linking CBI with IFAD, jointly hosting with SKD an episode of Food4Thought series focused on Revolutionizing Agri-Food Investments – Paving the Way for a Resilient, Sustainable Future, featuring high level panelists including Dr. Jo Puri, Associate Former Vice President of SKD (IFAD) and Mr. Sean Kidney, CEO of Climate Bonds.

Building on the success of the latest event, the Climate Bonds Initiative continued discussions with IFAD, which resulted in the signing, in May 2024, of a letter of intent to collaborate on diversifying IFAD’s offerings to its clients by introducing specialized advisory to design sustainable frameworks linked to IFAD’s unique mandate addressing the food insecurity, rural poverty, and small-scale producers’ challenges. The Rural Transformation Financial Framework (RTFF) aiming at promoting sustainable investments to drive rural transformation in developing countries. The partnership will promote the establishment of national taxonomies to streamline the development of financial schemes relating to rural agriculture, climate change, resilience and mitigation efforts with partners countries and their financial institutions.

In that context, PARM’s team is participating in the Food Value Chain technical working group of Climate Bonds Initiative since July 2024. The role of the technical working group is to advice in the development of the criteria for the food value chain apt to certify climate mitigation investments consistent with the 1.5^oC warming limit of the Paris Agreement. This will also ensure to maximize viable bond issuances in line with the sustainable investments sought by the IFAD/Climate Bonds collaboration. The criteria will enable stakeholders to identify investments that will deliver measurable climate mitigation benefits or demonstrably increase the adaptation and resilience of food value chain operations to the impacts of climate change.

Once again, PARM has demonstrated that through its network of partners, concrete collaborations in house can be established to thrive sustainable agriculture in alignment with IFAD priorities. PARM will continue to play its brokering role in connecting key actors of agricultural development at country, regional and global levels.