Over a quarter century since the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was signed, we endure and brace for the intensifying impacts of rising global temperatures. While international climate negotiations crawl along, most people agree that we remain achingly far from the monumental changes needed to prepare for climate change.

Beyond responding to escalating shareholder appeals for sustainability, the imperative to understand, disclose and shore up vulnerabilities brought on by rising global temperatures is increasingly being regognized by the private sector. Volatile weather patterns and rising seas invariably affect the bottom line of insurance companies, financial institutions that issue loans and mortgages, and businesses whose value chains rely on agricultural goods and natural resources.  Furthermore, given the outsized role the private sector has in shaping economies and livelihoods, taking action is critical for ensuring stable markets and societies. It is no secret that the negative impacts volatile markets and natural disasters have on those at the top of value chains trickle down and amplify as they reach the more vulnerable parts of societies. Yet the path to meaningful action to build climate resilience is often fraught with investment risks and uncertainty.

The U.S. State Department-funded Private Investment for Enhanced Resilience (PIER) project is creating pathways for private sector investment to strengthen resilience. Recognizing the critical need for access to finance and investment guidance, PIER is working in eight countries — Bangladesh, Ghana, Guyana, Indonesia, Mozambique, Peru, Tanzania and Vietnam — to help companies and governments lower vulnerability to the impacts of climate change.

Given the diverse socioeconomic and environmental contexts these countries represent, PIER support has taken many shapes. For example, in Ghana, PIER is working with private sector partner ECOM and farmers to improve cocoa resilience against disease and weather stresses. In Peru, PIER is helping update an existing government program that provides tax incentives for private companies that finance resilience-boosting infrastructure investments.

In Vietnam, PIER is also engaging with the national government, updating existing structures to mainstream climate risk awareness and mitigation in its booming private sector. Over the past 10 years, friendly domestic and foreign investment policies, a young and abundant workforce, and strategic geography have catapulted Vietnam into the global economy. Yet this low-lying country is exceptionally vulnerable to climate change, with rising seas, violent typhoons and crop salinization already affecting the 70 percent of its people who live along the coastline.

Vietnam’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE) understands that continued growth and prosperity hinge on the private sector’s ability to recognize, anticipate and adapt to these climate risks. Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) are a standard process applied around the world to evaluate program or project environmental risks. These are already required for company registration in Vietnam, yet MONRE’s EIA overlooks climate risk. PIER experts are providing technical support in updating MONRE’s EIA guidelines to include a climate risk screening and response process.

This new EIA process will improve climate risk awareness among Vietnam’s investors and help the government understand and communicate specific vulnerabilities. It will also support significant new trade partnerships with European Union and Asia-Pacific partners, which require transparent standards compliance and environmental regulation. And it is also scalable, since EIAs are already a widely applied screening process worldwide and similar upgrades could be easily translated to other countries.

Given the world’s growing population and the accelerating pace of climate change, there is a great need for pragmatic solutions. Bringing together the public and private sectors to build more resilient economies and societies is one promising approach that PIER is bringing to the fore.

In the United States, May and June is graduation season, when America’s youth mark an important milestone in leaving behind known comforts and pursuing economic independence. The occasion is observed with platitudes from community leaders, politicians, business leaders and celebrities about seizing the moment, the endless opportunities ahead of them, and being the change they want to see in the world. The messages are at once familiar and totally forgettable.

To my knowledge, not one of these speeches encouraged young Americans to be smallholder farmers. President Barack Obama spoke at my graduation in 2010. Can you imagine if someone had told his father his future was limited to smallholder farming?

Yet, this is the future envisioned by donors, development leaders and programs throughout transitioning economies. Why should the young people of Kenya, Senegal or Vietnam have their opportunities defined by programs meant to give them those same opportunities for economic independence? How can we, as development partners and implementers, encourage the boundless ambition and creativity of today’s youth?

At the Market Systems Symposium 2019, practitioners and thought leaders from throughout the development community met over three days to discuss the challenges young people face in agriculture, experience in designing and scaling interventions that create opportunity for youth, and how to engage young people as the leaders of transformational change, not those to whom change happens.
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In keeping with the tired tradition of the graduation speaker, we arrived at a list. But not a list for young people; rather, a list for the adults in our industry intending to empower them. So, to the donors, the developers, the designers and the doers, these are our development rules for engaging youth in agriculture:

1. Don’t tell young people their future is only in smallholder agriculture. While a growing global population means the world needs more produce in the future, this does not mean the future needs as many farmers. The role of development practitioners needs to expand the possibilities for young people, not to define them.
2. Youth are not all the same. Development can’t treat youth as a homogenous group, under which a single treatment will impact everyone the same. Rather, development programs need to reflect the dynamic populations they hope to engage.
3. Let youth lead the solutions. How many programs expect implementers to “target” young people? Perhaps the best way to engage young people is to offer them opportunities to lead program design and interventions instead of merely being subject to them.
4. Don’t tell youth to wait their turn. Another common refrain in development programs is the need to develop solutions and systems to support the youth of tomorrow. How about letting today’s young people develop the platforms from which future generations can benefit for sustained growth?
5. Not all young people are entrepreneurs. The solution to job shortages throughout the developing world is not for everyone to become an entrepreneur, but to develop systems that support entrepreneurial youth so they can employ those for whom self-employment is not desirable.
6. Youth are rational decision-makers. OK, not all the time and not in every situation, but do you always make the right decision? Rather than being built on the assumption that if only young people had more information they would do the right thing, development programs need to recognize that young people will pursue their rational interests and our job is to encourage them and give them the tools to support them if it fails.

​A recent New York Times article boldly proclaimed, “Millennials ‘Make Farming Sexy’ in Africa, Where Tilling Soil Once Meant Shame.” The article went on to explain how young people in Ghana, driven by technology, social commitment and, yes, profit, are causing a cultural shift around attitudes toward agriculture in Ghana. As development practitioners, let’s expand the opportunities for young people in agriculture, not define them. Let’s bring sexy back.

If that had been President Obama’s message, perhaps I would remember more of what he said.

This blog was originally published on the Market Systems Development Hub blog. Featured photo courtesy of Market Systems Symposium 2019.

I was eight years old when I saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time. It seemed so vast and limitless it was hard to imagine what was on the other side, let alone understand what an incredible resource it is.  As a native of Minnesota, I grew up around a lot of water — the state slogan is “Land of 10,000 Lakes” — but I could usually see across all those bodies of water. The ocean was different, and I’ve never forgotten my first glimpse of it.

It’s one reason I feel incredibly fortunate to have recently traveled to Dakar, Senegal, to work on startup for a new Winrock International project, the USAID/Senegal Feed the Future Fisheries, Biodiversity and Livelihoods Activity. It was my first time in Dakar, and I loved being able to see the sea from our office window and to breathe the smell of salt water carried in by the cool morning breeze.

But the beauty of the ocean and the colorful fishing boats belie the challenges under the waves in Senegal, the second-largest fish producer in West Africa. The fisheries’ value chain in Senegal is caught between artisanal practices and a rapidly globalizing economy. The growing number of fishers and the increasing demand from lucrative export markets is leading to overexploitation of fisheries resources, threatening the regenerative capacity of many species. This increases the price for fish in local markets and poses a broader threat to food security and nutrition in Senegal.

In light of these challenges, this new activity has an important role to play. It aims to improve the management of fisheries, increase ecological sustainability for the country’s stressed marine resources, and improve food security, increase incomes and strengthen resilience for the people and communities of Senegal. The project will build capacity for local partners and communities in fisheries management, supplementing their significant local knowledge with new skills and expertise, enabling them to better manage their precious ocean resources.

Winrock has a long history of empowering community development through the wise use of natural resources, especially water. For example, Winrock’s Vietnam Forests and Deltas project has worked with the Government of Vietnam to develop a payment for ecosystem services initiativethat has mobilized over $400 million to conserve forests for water services. In Bangladesh, the Climate Resilient Ecosystems and Livelihoods project worked with the government, local NGOs and communities to conserve seasonally flooded wetlandsand the important fish species found there.

This new project in Senegal builds on the successes of Winrock’s previous natural resource management projects, while also tackling challenges unique to Senegal. Over the next five years, the project intends to support more than 85,000 people to improve fisheries management over more than 4,600 square miles of coastline and near-coastline communities while increasing people’s incomes and the sustainability of their main food source.

This long-term strategy may ensure a brighter future for the people of this enchanting country. In the spirit of World Oceans Day, that would truly be an outcome worth celebrating.

Photos by Matt Maltby