For Ahumwire Justine, a banana farmer from Shuku, in Uganda’s southwest, a day last October brought home just how vulnerable her plantation was to extreme weather.
That day, a devastating rain and hailstorm destroyed 300 of her banana trees and killed two of her cows. The damage was so bad, she and her family considered leaving their two-hectare plot, which was not insured.
“We had no food, no money for school fees for my children and no food for my animals,” the mother of four says.
The frequency and intensity of storms like the one that destroyed Justine’s crops is increasing due to climate change, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The NDC Action Project – a joint initiative between the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the UNEP Copenhagen Climate Centre (UNEP-CCC) – is aiming to give farmers like Justine a measure of protection from increasingly extreme weather.
“We know farmers, particularly smallholders, are struggling to adapt to the effects of the climate crisis,” says Mirey Atallah, Chief of the Adaptation and Resilience Branch within UNEP's Climate Change Division. “That’s why projects that combine technical and financial instruments such as these are so important. They increase resilience and ensure that extreme weather does not have to be catastrophic for farmers.”
Bananas are integral to Uganda’s economy, with 47 per cent of farmers involved in their cultivation in 2019, according to Uganda’s statistics bureau. Bananas are much more than a food crop; with the plant’s fibres used for ropes and mats, and its leaves for mulching and packaging.
But many banana farmers are facing an uncertain future. Climate change has made Uganda’s weather increasingly unpredictable over the past 15 years, says Uganda’s government. Farmers also say that growing seasons are now punctuated by droughts and torrential downpours.
“We could have two years of non-stop rain, and then six months with no rain at all,” says Florence Muranga, Director of the Banana Industrial Research and Development Centre, a non-governmental organization. “[Farmers] can lose their food, their livelihood, their house in one day,” she adds.
The centre, which represents 5,000 banana farmers, has played an important role in UNEP’s efforts to expand access to crop insurance.
It has trained an initial group of 930 banana farmers in how to use smartphones and how to upload photos of their healthy banana crops to a digital platform. When there is a storm, farmers share photos of the damage to the platform and agroeconomists hired by the insurance company determine the value of the damage. Nearly 50 per cent of the farmers trialling the technology are women.
The fact that most of the farmers had never used smartphones before proved not to be a barrier. ‘Champion farmers’, such as Justine, were trained to show other smallholders how to use the devices.
Another partner of this project is Agriculture and Climate Risk Enterprise Africa, a company that connects smallholder farmers with insurers. The insurance is delivered through Agro Consortium Limited, a public-private coalition of 13 insurance companies.
As the insurance is linked to a digital platform, there are minimal in-person claims inspections, which speeds up payouts and lowers premiums.
Farmers are also trained in water management and agroforestry. This has boosted productivity, in some cases, six-fold, and decreased climate-related losses. These practices lower the payout risk for insurance companies. The insurance also reassures financial institutions, making it easier for farmers to get loans.
The success of this proof-of-concept project means the scheme will now be rolled out to all 5,000 farmers covered by the Banana Industrial Research and Development Centre. The aim is to expand the programme to include 50,000 banana farmers across the country.
For Justine, the insurance offers something priceless: peace of mind. “I know that if [my crops get damaged] I have help. It’s not like in other years, where I would have to start from zero.”
The Sectoral Solution to the climate crisis
UNEP is at the forefront of supporting the Paris Agreement goal of keeping global temperature rise well below 2°C, and aiming for 1.5°C, compared to pre-industrial levels. To do this, UNEP has developed the Sectoral Solution, a roadmap to reducing emissions across sectors in line with the Paris Agreement commitments and in pursuit of climate stability. The six sectors identified are: energy; industry; agriculture and food; forests and land use; transport; and buildings and cities.
