Climate resilience is a cross-cutting priority for CAPRED and the Australian Government. Cambodia is highly exposed to the effects of climate change, with increasing threats to natural resources, workforce productivity and critical bases of economic growth. The economy is highly dependent on climate-sensitive sectors such as agriculture, water resources, forestry and fisheries. Without necessary actions, increases in climate change impacts – including the intensity and frequency of floods and droughts – are expected to reduce the country’s overall gross domestic product by about 10% by 2050. These changes disproportionately affect the most vulnerable Cambodians, including rural communities and Indigenous Peoples with limited means of adaptation.

CAPRED contributes to climate change mitigation by investing in solutions that reduce emissions, such as supporting renewable energy generation and distribution and energy efficiency measures. The program promotes climate change adaptation measures such as climate-smart agricultural technologies, low-carbon agro-processing, and piped clean water infrastructure.

The Royal Government of Cambodia has stated that 95% of climate finance in Cambodia will focus on supporting adaptation measures. Yet there is a 90%-95% financing gap (US$800 million) to meet the funding needs of the Cambodian National Adaptation Plan.

CAPRED is helping the Royal Government of Cambodia with climate adaptation investments. The program is also committed to catalysing the private sector’s participation in climate-smart investments, contributing to Cambodia’s effort to reduce the financing gap to combat climate change.

We are also supporting climate mitigation and Cambodia’s Nationally Determined Contribution. As a Party to the Paris Agreement, Cambodia must establish a Nationally Determined Contribution and update it every 5 years. Cambodia gave its Carbon Long-Term Development Strategy (LTS4CN) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2021.

How climate resilience works across the program

Climate resilience is a cross-cutting issue for CAPRED. We use a participatory disaster risk reduction and climate change approach to assess climate risks and identify opportunities to enhance adaptation and mitigation measures in all our activities. This approach helps us to design activities that are more focused on climate change adaptation and mitigation, especially in agriculture and infrastructure.

Agriculture

Agricultural production has been significantly affected by climate change, including through increased exposure to droughts, floods, heat and pests. It is predicted that for each one-degree Celsius increase in temperature, rice productivity will decline by 10%.

CAPRED is working on innovative agricultural initiatives including promoting climate-smart agriculture technologies and inputs, strengthening value chains, and improving post-harvest planning.

We are promoting more sustainable and climate-adaptive crop varieties. These include the new fragrant rice variety, Champei Sar 70, which was developed with Australian funding and can be harvested three times per year to promote food security.

We are also introducing innovative technologies to increase the resilience of Cambodia’s agricultural production and decrease water and input use and land disturbance. These include growth-based irrigation technology and straw chopping harvesters.

CAPRED also provides training in the best use of chemicals, pesticides and herbicides and in soil improvement for seed producers. We are looking to promote crop insurance as a social safety net for farmers, especially smallholder farmers, for both climate and price shocks.

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Infrastructure

CAPRED’s work on infrastructure also has climate dimensions, including improving planning and management of water storage and clean water distribution to help build the resilience of rural Cambodians to drought and other climate change impacts.

We will also play a role in matching green finance to potential projects in Cambodia through our finance-focused work.

In the energy sector, CAPRED focuses on providing technical capabilities and policy support to increase renewable power uptake, improve infrastructure resilience and reduce emissions. We are working with government agencies and the private sector to pilot a mini-off-grid solar farm to supply electricity to remote communities.

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