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.” A pilot project allows farmers use mobile phones to submit images of damaged crops to their insurers, speeding up the claims process. Photo by UNEP/ Eugene Kaiga Related Story Traditional building practices offer sustainable solutions as African cities grow
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