Weather Risk Management Facility

The Weather Risk Management Facility (WRMF) is a joint United Nations partnership established in 2008 between IFAD and the World Food Programme (WFP). It supports initiatives aimed at reducing smallholders’ vulnerability to weather and other agricultural production risks, in order to encourage and protect investments in smallholder agricultural production and contribute to food security.

The WRMF does so through research, technical assistance and capacity building, and implementation of innovative risk management solutions, particularly agricultural index insurance.

It comprises specialists from IFAD’s Inclusive Rural Financial Services team and WFP’s Climate Resilience for Food Security team, as well as international experts with a wide experience in agricultural insurance and risk management.

Since its creation, with funding support from Agence Francaise de Développement and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, WRMF has gained experience in multiple areas of index insurance, including:

• Design and implementation of weather index insurance (WII) pilots in China and Ethiopia
• Global research and key lessons for reaching scale and sustainability, and roles of public and private partners
• Technical advice and capacity-building of projects, partners and staff
• Researching and testing of innovative remote sensing approaches to index insurance.