Banner image: Renny Chemtai, a Venture37 dairy nutrition officer in Kenya, explains how to use Napier grass and other forages to make a balanced ration for dairy cattle. Photo credit: Peter Bowman/NPA

The United Nation’s 29th annual climate summit, COP29, will take place this year in Baku, Azerbaijan from November 11 to 22. COP29 has been named the “Finance COP” because representatives from every country will set a new global climate finance goal. It will replace a target set in 2009, where high income countries agreed to collectively mobilize $100 billion annually by 2020 to help low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) reduce their emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change. The 2009 commitment stemmed from the recognition that LMICs are disproportionately affected by climate change, despite having contributed very little to the climate crisis. At the same time, these countries have the fewest resources to invest in climate adaptation and the transition to a low-emissions future.
 
While high income countries may have finally met the $100 billion annual target in 2022, this falls short of the level of support LMICs require. For example, the finance gap for adaptation alone is estimated at $194 to $366 billion per year, and this does not include the support needed to ensure low emissions growth across sectors as these countries’ economies grow.
 
With climate finance on the agenda for COP29, one sector that historically has received very little financing attention, despite its importance to livelihoods in LMICs and huge potential for greener growth, is the livestock sector. As part of its livestock programming, Venture37 has joined a Climate Finance & Livestock Solutions Group and contributed to evidence briefs published by Livestock Data for Decisions (LD4D) ahead of COP29 that seek to build the investment case for the sector, provide robust quantification methods for estimating livestock emissions, and offer guidance for policy levers to unlock climate finance.

The Case for Investing in the Livestock Sector

As outlined in the new evidence brief, The Climate Investment Case for the Livestock Sector, for millions of people across LMICs, highly diverse livestock systems represent food, draught power, fertilizer, fiber, a convertible source of income, cultural tradition, and resilience in the face of shocks and stressors. The livestock sector offers numerous co-benefits across various scales of production — from smallholder farms right through to consumers — and plays a wider role in the sustainable transformation of food systems. Yet, the livestock sector is also a significant contributor to climate change, which harms the very farmers and rural communities who depend on livestock for their livelihoods.
At the same time, global food production needs to rise by 30 percent by 2050, with some LMICs requiring a 100 percent increase in output to support a growing population. This growth must span all food types, with a projected 20 percent increase in global demand for animal-sourced foods compared to 2020 levels, mostly driven by population growth, urbanization, rising incomes, and transforming diets in LMICs. However, low productivity in the livestock sector in LMICs leads to relatively high greenhouse gas emissions intensity of livestock products due to low output per animal. This means that without improved productivity in the sector, more animals will be required to meet the rising demand for animal protein, leading to increased emissions in the sector.  


 
A just transition to low emissions development in LMICs must consider nuanced and integrated solutions that include investing in sustainable livestock production. By not investing in improved productivity gains and low-emissions development of the livestock sector, the sector would continue an unsustainable upward trajectory of high animal numbers and high emissions.
 

Case Study: Increasing East African Dairy Productivity and Reducing Emissions Intensity: Co-Investments in Early Forage Market Development

The Nourishing Prosperity Alliance (NPA) project provides a case study on how concerted investment in the livestock sector can lead to productivity gains, higher incomes for farmers, and lower greenhouse gas emissions intensity of animal source food products — a win-win for livelihoods and sustainable growth of the sector. The project is led by Land O’Lakes Venture37 with Forage Genetics International (FGI), Corteva Agriscience, and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).
 
A pilot of the project took place in Kenya from 2020 to 2023 — providing a scalable, market-wide solution to key gaps in the animal nutrition market to improve dairy productivity, boost climate resilience among farmers, increase access to animal-sourced foods, and reduce emissions by promoting climate-smart agriculture and optimized animal nutrition practices.
 
The pilot strengthened forage enterprises, feed processors, and sales agents to increase access to nutritious and climate-adapted forage for dairy farmers and educate farmers on improved dairy cattle nutrition and ration balancing. The pilot reached 7,408 Kenyan farmers (60% women) and 25 private sector actors and produced the following results:

• 26% estimated GHG emissions intensity reduction for milk produced  
• 46% average increase per smallholder farmer of total liters of milk produced annually
• 68% average increase per farmer in annual income from milk for smallholder farmers

 
Due to the success of the pilot, Venture37 was able to secure blended financing to expand NPA’s work in Kenya and begin work in Ethiopia under a new project through 2028. Through these efforts, Venture37 will continue collaborating with implementing partners Corteva Agriscience, FGI, and ILRI, along with local partners across the forage market system, to reach 120,000 smallholder farmers in Kenya and 100,000 smallholder farmers in Ethiopia.
 
This scale-up will support progress towards Kenya and Ethiopia’s NDCs which both list the livestock sector as a key sector for mitigation abatements with tremendous potential to reduce emissions through increased productivity and efficiency. This is a critical transformation for both countries, particularly in the dairy sector, as dairy  contributes 4.5% of total GDP in Kenya and 15% of total GDP in Ethiopia. 
 

How Can Livestock Emissions Be Measured, and How Can that Inform More Sustainable Practices?

Estimating emissions reductions is key to documenting the success of specific practice changes and livestock investments overall. Another new evidence brief, Estimating Livestock Emissions to Unlock Climate Financing, provides a high-level overview of the methodologies available to calculate GHG emissions from livestock.
 
These methodologies are drawn from science-based guidelines developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has developed guidelines for calculating GHG emissions from several sectors, including agriculture. There are different tiers of IPCC methodologies, representing different levels of complexity. Tier 1 calculations are the most basic: they only require livestock population size and combine that with default emission factors to generate emissions. Tier 2 calculations require substantially more data: the default emission factors are replaced with specific data based on specific scenarios. Since livestock-associated emissions are generated throughout the value chain, lifecycle assessments can capture the full scope of emissions.
 
The NPA pilot utilized emission factors for East African dairy cattle to estimate emissions reductions. So, the reductions in emission intensity were driven solely by increases in dairy productivity. The scaled-up NPA project is taking a Tier 2 approach to measuring emissions. NPA is using the CLEANED tool, developed by the Alliance for Biodiversity and CIAT. CLEANED is a lifecycle assessment tool based on the IPCC guidelines.
 
NPA is collecting detailed data directly from a statistically representative sample of project-supported dairy farmers semi-annually. These data feed into CLEANED, providing a robust understanding of emissions changes due to adoption of improved practices by farmers. The high level of detail of the data collected will allow NPA to generate specific conclusions regarding the extent to which certain practice changes reduce emissions and emissions intensity. This will allow NPA to demonstrate total emissions reductions across the entire investment and, potentially, draw in additional investment to scale up the work further. NPA’s experience will be shared with other organizations implementing similar programs and climate financing institutions, to further facilitate additional funding and emissions reductions elsewhere.
 

A Just Transition

With COP29 being dubbed the “Finance COP,” elevating the need to direct climate financing to the livestock sector is imperative to enable a just transition that improves the livelihoods and nutrition of people in LMICs while also ensuring lower emissions development, compared to business as usual. The new briefs developed by the Climate Finance & Livestock Solutions Group seek to guide national decision makers, climate finance investors, and donors to design solutions and provide financing for climate adaptation and mitigation in the livestock sector.
 
All Climate Finance & Livestock Solutions Group evidence briefs can be viewed here: https://livestockdata.org/climate-finance