Thank you for the invitation to speak to the committee about Canada's climate finance commitments. I'd like to bring the other side of the story here today.
Before I make any recommendations, I want to tell you about a woman I met last month in Tanzania, which is in eastern Africa, a farmer named Cecilia Lubeja. Cecilia is the mother of six children. She started farming with her family when she was seven. She is now almost 50, and farming continues to be her primary source of income. With a number of decades of farming experience behind her, Cecilia knows when to expect the rain, what types of seeds to plant, and how to prepare the soil for a good harvest.
The problem is that her knowledge doesn't work anymore. The rain doesn't start when it should. She is consistently faced with extended periods of drought. When the rains do come, they are so strong and sudden that they wash away the topsoil and flood her fields. She also now struggles to control the pests in her fields, pests that she has never before seen in her area.
Cecilia told me that farming has become increasingly difficult, and she has had to rely on clearing land for others in her community, in order to earn enough money to feed her family.
Cecilia is only one of millions of people in developing countries already struggling to deal with significant changes in rainfall, storms and temperature. Farmers depend on the weather, so they are often the ones who are hit the worst.
These farmers and the local organizations that work with them agree that the world needs to reduce the greenhouse gases that are causing the problem, but they tell us that the immediate need is to help them adapt to the changes they are already seeing. Mitigation is important and adaptation is crucial.
Civil society organizations are essential in advancing Canada's adaptation work. In Cecilia's case, Canadian Foodgrains Bank worked with local organizations in Tanzania to train Cecilia in conservation agriculture, a low-input farming method that improves soil conditions and allows crops to thrive in variable climatic conditions.
At Canadian Foodgrains Bank, we envision a world without hunger. A recent report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has stated that, after years of decline, hunger levels are again on the rise. This is largely due to climate variability and extremes. At Canadian Foodgrains Bank, we are delivering food to people in humanitarian crises, helping smallholder farmers better their livelihoods and improving family nutrition. We are supported by thousands of Canadians, many of whom are farmers, who believe that we as Canadians have much that we can share.
We should be more generous in supporting the 70% of hungry people in the world who are farmers. Donations from the public are matched by the Government of Canada, and for that I say thank you. We draw on what we've learned from our work in developing countries, and what we continue to hear from farmers like Cecilia, to engage in policy dialogue with the Canadian government. It is from this experience, our work in about 40 countries around the world, that I have put together three recommendations for this committee regarding Canada's international climate finance.
First, Canada should contribute its fair share, based on the size of our economy relative to the economy of other donors.
Second, Canada should make sure that half of our contributions help people adapt to the changes already affecting them.
Third, Canada should make sure our adaptation efforts are targeting the poorest and most vulnerable.
On the first point, our fair share, you may be wondering how that's determined. Canada's economy makes up 3.9% of the total economies of donor countries within the OECD, so our fair share is 3.9% of any global commitment. Donors have committed to U.S. $100 billion annually for climate finance by 2020. Based on the 3.9%, Canada's fair share of that is $1.9 billion Canadian per year.
Canada's current commitment of scaling up to $800 million a year by 2020 is a big improvement over our efforts in the past several years, but we're still less than halfway to the $1.9 billion that represents our fair share. While we like to think of ourselves as leaders on climate finance, Canada is actually at the back of the pack, ranking 16th out of 23 donor countries.
My second recommendation is about adaptation. The Paris Agreement states that donors should aim to achieve a balance between adaptation and mitigation. Many countries already allocate 50% or more to adaptation. Canada is improving in this: We've gone from about 16% adaptation in the 2010-12 period up to about 30% for the current period, but there's room for improvement.
I am not saying that mitigation isn't important. The world needs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and Canada has a significant role in that. But when you consider that the average Tanzanian emits 1/157th of the CO2 the average Canadian emits, it's clear that Tanzania would do better to focus on adaptation for Cecilia and the rest of the farmers who feed that country rather than on mitigation. Canada has the responsibility and the capacity to support these efforts.
My third recommendation is to focus on the people hardest hit by the impact of climate change, which brings me back to Cecilia in Tanzania. She is a woman, and we know that women are particularly vulnerable to the impact of changing climate. She is a farmer, and we know that food producers in developing countries who rely on the weather for their livelihood are already struggling with changing and unpredictable conditions. She lives in Tanzania, which is considered by the United Nations to be one of the least developed countries.
This group of countries, along with small island developing states, are having the hardest time dealing with climate change. They need to adapt, and they need climate financing in the form of grants to do it. What they don't need is greater debt loads, which is what happens when climate financing comes as loans.
Additionally, Canada currently channels over 80% of its climate finance through multilateral channels. These channels have not been very effective at reaching the poorest and most vulnerable. Multilateral channels are heavily weighted toward mitigation projects and projects in middle-income countries. Multilateral development banks have a poor history of gender-equality programming.
If Canada really wants to reach those on the front lines of climate change, civil society organizations have a better track record. These include Canadian organizations already working closely with those impacted by climate change, and farmers' organizations in developing countries. Such organizations already have expertise in how people can adapt to the changes they are seeing, which ensures Canadian dollars are used most efficiently.
For Cecilia in Tanzania, the only fields she reaped a harvest on last season were the ones for which she applied her training in conservation agriculture. Farmers in her community are seeing the benefits of such practices and learning from Cecilia how to adopt them. Cecilia is grateful to now have food for her family and some to sell as well.
On behalf of Canadian Foodgrains Bank, as well as the Canadian Coalition on Climate Change and Development, of which I am the co-chair, I thank you for this opportunity to join this important discussion.