Bill Gates’ foundation has promised to invest $1.4 billion over four years to help smallholder farmers adapt to the worsening effects of climate change – a commitment that comes just a week after a new memo from the tech billionaire drew sharp criticism from the climate community.

The funding from the Gates Foundation will help expand access for farmers across sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia to innovations that strengthen rural livelihoods and food systems, it said in a statement. These include mobile apps offering tailored weather information for planting decisions, drought and heat-resistant crops and livestock, and efforts to restore degraded land.

The pledge announced on Friday builds on a previous $1.4-billion commitment announced three years ago at COP27 that, the foundation says, is already helping “millions” of farmers.

“Smallholder farmers are feeding their communities under the toughest conditions imaginable,” said Bill Gates, who chairs the foundation. “We’re supporting their ingenuity with the tools and resources to help them thrive – because investing in their resilience is one of the smartest, most impactful things we can do for people and the planet.”

Shift from focus on “near-term” emission goals

The investment supports Bill Gates’ vision of “prioritizing climate investments for maximum human impact”, as the Microsoft co-founder outlined in a 17-page memo he published last week, according to the foundation.

In his missive, Gates acknowledged that climate change is “a very important problem”, but called for a “strategic pivot” away from focusing too much on “near-term emission goals” – something that, he argued, is diverting funds away from efforts to eradicate poverty.

“Our chief goal should be to prevent suffering, particularly for those in the toughest conditions who live in the world’s poorest countries,” he wrote.

The memo has drawn ire from many climate scientists who, while agreeing with some of Gates’ central observations, have condemned his overall framing.

Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at Berkeley Earth, said the world has ample resources to both reduce planet-heating emissions and help people adapt to climate change – if the political will exists.

“We don’t necessarily live in a zero-sum world,” he said in a webinar organised by Covering Climate Now, which supports media coverage of climate change. “It’s a policy problem, not a resource problem”.

Hausfather added that when climate finance is directed toward helping the world’s poorest countries curb their emissions, it might be better spent on adaptation or disease eradication instead. “But that’s not the fundamental thing standing in the way of solving climate change,” he said. “That is emissions mostly coming from the rich countries.”

“Straw man” argument criticised

Experts have also expressed frustration over Gates’ perceived “black-and-white” approach to climate impacts, which has been seized upon by notable climate deniers.

In his memo, the billionaire wrote that “although climate change will have serious consequences – particularly for people in the poorest countries – it will not lead to humanity’s demise”.

Picking up on Gates’ words – and misrepresenting them – US President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social: “I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax. Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue.”

Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy, said Gates’ framing relied on a “straw man” argument.

“I’ve not seen a single scientific paper that ever posited the human race will become extinct due to climate change,” she said. But Gates “is speaking about it as if scientists are saying that,” she added. “What we are saying is that suffering increases with each tenth of a degree of warming.”

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After climate memo row, Gates gives $1.4bn to help farmers cope with a hotter world