Accelerated and equitable climate action in mitigating and adapting to climate change impacts is critical to sustainable development. The whole spectrum of NABARD’s functions and initiatives, unique across the world, focuses on green and sustainable development.

NABARD’s initiatives in the Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Rural Development (ANR) sector have integral components of climate action for vulnerable sectors and communities. Prominent among these are: Watershed Development, Tribal Development, Infrastructure development under RIDF, NIDA, etc. besides its climate action projects. These projects often involve climate resilience and sustainability components.

NABARD has the unique distinction of being accredited as the National Implementing Entity (NIE) of the Adaptation Fund (AF of UNFCCC) and the Direct Access Entity (DAE) of the Green Climate Fund (GCF of UNFCCC). NABARD is also acting as the NIE of the National Adaptation Fund for Climate Change (NAFCC), instituted by the Government of India. These accreditations have enabled NABARD to become a leader in climate change adaptation programmes in the country and to be an integral part of national level initiatives on climate action.

NABARD, as an accredited institution under these funds, has facilitated sanction and implementation of 40 projects involving USD 257 million in project assistance specific to climate action, these include:

• 6 projects of the Adaptation Fund for USD 9.9 million, besides 2 projects of readiness grant
• 30 projects of for more than 100 million USD under NAFCC and
• 2 projects involving of USD 134.35 million of GCF assistance.

These projects, apart from NABARD’s other initiatives, are creating substantial impacts towards building climate resilience and climate change mitigation.

NABARD has created, from its own resources, a dedicated Climate Change Fund (CCF) with Rs.20 Crore corpus to support awareness-building on Climate Change issues among various stakeholders and to promote and demonstrate innovative Climate Change adaptation/mitigation interventions and climate-resilient livelihoods.

Climate Change Fund- Interest Differential (CCF-ID) has been set up in NABARD in FY 2023-24 with the approval of RBI to support inter alia innovative projects with a focus on adaptation as also experiment with creation of new financial models, besides soft activities.

NABARD has established a Centre for Climate Change at BIRD, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, which is involved in knowledge sharing, training, capacity building of stakeholders, policy advocacy, etc.

“Climate Adaptation, Resilience and Climate Finance in Rural India (CAFRI)” is another collaborative initiative between GIZ and NABARD. Under CAFRI, GIZ supports NABARD in policy, planning and action for climate resilience and capacity development as well as promoting climate finance.

The first phase CAFRI-I was implemented during the period 2020-2023. The second phase, CAFRI-II is under consideration.