| Overview : The exposure of low income countries to natural disasters is increasing, largely because of factors ranging from growing concentration of population and assets in risky areas, to increasing climate variability, economic costs of slow-onset disasters like drought, rapid on-set of disasters like earth quakes. Thus, Small Holder rain-fed Farmers and Pastoralists have very limited means of reducing their sensitivity to climate changes, extreme weather, market adjustments and other risks associated with these issues, threatening their very livelihood systems and reducing their options. Without sufficient earnings and stable capital bases, the SHFPs need to be supported to apply alternative proactive approaches to increase their productivity and to build their resilience to risks and deterioration to extreme poverty. In Uganda, resilience building for SHFPs is also challenged by other factors apart from climate variability. Among these is limited access to micro-finance because this population segment often lives in remote locations that are not services regularly by financial outlets, which makes cost of lending and cost of borrowing un-necessarily high. Moreover, the available micro finance service providers have strict collateral requirements, which pushes farmers to engage with informal lending sources, at very high interest rates and operating within a largely unregulated legal framework. In addition, the insurance industry is currently not adequately capable of covering the risks faced by Small Holder rain-fed Farmers and Pastoralists, despite the high potential for agricultural insurance in the country. Therefore, as climate related risks become more prevalent in scale and intensity, premium costs are likely to increase with a net effect of leaving this very vulnerable segment of the population trapped in climate poverty. Whereas Uganda can provide weather forecasts and climate scenarios to help with drought and flood early warning, freely available satellite images do not yet have fine enough resolution to be used to validate insurance claims, which is likely to make pay-outs contestable and insurance schemes unattractive. Finally, Small Holder rain-fed Farmers and Pastoralists have limited access to farming technologies that can help them adapt to climate change and build resilience to climate change. Linkages with research and financial services to acquire the technologies, and the would-be supportive policies and legislation to facilitate the adoption of adaptation technologies with financial services is inadequate. Objective: The overall objective of the assignment is to develop a concept note, also known as a project identification form (PIF) to address the gaps in climate risk finance for small holder rain-fed farmers and pastoralists in Uganda. | 
