Climate Resilience in Agriculture: Outcomes of the 3rd PROGRESS Project Round table

On Jan­u­ary 29, 2026, the Insti­tute for Eco­nom­ics and Fore­cast­ing of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences of Ukraine host­ed the 3^rdRound table of PROGRESS project part­ners, ded­i­cat­ed to adapt­ing Ukraine’s agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor to cli­mate change and devel­op­ing cli­mate-ori­ent­ed prac­tices in hor­ti­cul­ture.

The hybrid-for­mat Round table brought togeth­er over 160 rep­re­sen­ta­tives from min­istries and gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tions, sci­en­tists, financiers, com­mu­ni­ties, busi­ness­es, and inter­na­tion­al part­ners. In par­tic­u­lar, the event was attend­ed by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Min­istry of Econ­o­my, Envi­ron­ment and Agri­cul­ture of Ukraine, as well as the Ger­man Fed­er­al Min­istry for the Envi­ron­ment, Cli­mate Action, Nature Con­ser­va­tion and Nuclear Safe­ty (BMUKN) and the Embassy of the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many in Ukraine. Agri­cul­ture is one of the key sec­tors of Ukraine’s econ­o­my, crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant for food secu­ri­ty and exports. At the same time, it suf­fers most from droughts, unpre­dictable pre­cip­i­ta­tion, and soil degra­da­tion. There­fore, par­tic­i­pants focused on pre­sent­ing con­crete solu­tions and finan­cial mech­a­nisms for tran­si­tion­ing to sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion.

Through­out 2025, the PROGRESS and EU4ClimateResilience projects have built a com­pre­hen­sive ana­lyt­i­cal and prac­ti­cal foun­da­tion for the devel­op­ment of cli­mate-resilient agri­cul­ture in Ukraine. Key achieve­ments of the projects include the Cli­mate risks and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty assess­ment in Ukraine’s agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor, the prepa­ra­tion of nation­al ana­lyt­i­cal reports and pol­i­cy rec­om­men­da­tions in the areas of soil man­age­ment, water resources, and green financ­ing, the devel­op­ment of a cat­a­logue fea­tur­ing 35 best prac­tice pro­files for cli­mate change adap­ta­tion in hor­ti­cul­ture, and the orga­ni­za­tion of train­ing events and region­al work­shops on green finance.

Dur­ing the event, appre­ci­a­tion was expressed for the con­sis­tent sup­port to Ukraine in the con­text of trans­for­ma­tions and increas­ing cli­mate chal­lenges. It was also high­light­ed that agri­cul­ture, par­tic­u­lar­ly crop and live­stock pro­duc­tion, is among the sec­tors of Ukraine’s econ­o­my most sen­si­tive to cli­mate change, while at the same time play­ing a cru­cial role in ensur­ing food secu­ri­ty and sus­tain­ing inter­na­tion­al trade. The project’s deliv­er­ables were not­ed for their prac­ti­cal nature and their poten­tial for direct appli­ca­tion in shap­ing state pol­i­cy, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the areas of food sys­tems adap­ta­tion, sus­tain­able man­age­ment of nat­ur­al resources, and align­ment with Euro­pean approach­es.

The Round table also out­lined coop­er­a­tion pri­or­i­ties for 2026, which will include devel­op­ing and imple­ment­ing ToT (Train­ing of Train­ers) mod­ules for farm­ers and busi­ness­es, con­duct­ing a com­pe­ti­tion for demon­stra­tion projects on the Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Fund’s online plat­form, train­ing farm­ers in inte­grat­ed pest man­age­ment, as well as con­duct­ing nation­al and local infor­ma­tion and aware­ness cam­paigns.

The project ‘Pro­mot­ing Green Deal Readi­ness in the East­ern Part­ner­ship Coun­tries’ (PROGRESS) is fund­ed by the Ger­man Fed­er­al Min­istry for the Envi­ron­ment, Cli­mate Action, Nature Con­ser­va­tion and Nuclear Safe­ty (BMUKN) under its Inter­na­tion­al Cli­mate Ini­tia­tive (IKI) and is imple­ment­ed by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Inter­na­tionale Zusam­me­nar­beit (GIZ) GmbH, as the lead agency, in part­ner­ship with the Organ­i­sa­tion for Eco­nom­ic Co-oper­a­tion and Devel­op­ment (OECD), the Region­al Envi­ron­men­tal Cen­tre for the Cau­ca­sus (REC), the Euro­pean Busi­ness Asso­ci­a­tion (EBA) Moldo­va and the State Orga­ni­za­tion ‘Insti­tute for Eco­nom­ics and Fore­cast­ing of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences of Ukraine’ (IEF). 

The project ‘EU4ClimateResilience: Decar­bon­i­sa­tion and Cli­mate Resilience in the East­ern Part­ner­ship Coun­tries’ is a region­al project co-financed by the Euro­pean Union and the Ger­man Fed­er­al Min­istry for the Envi­ron­ment, Cli­mate Action, Nature Con­ser­va­tion and Nuclear Safe­ty (BMUKN) and imple­ment­ed in Ukraine by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Inter­na­tionale Zusam­me­nar­beit (GIZ) GmbH in coop­er­a­tion with the OECD.