Seoul, Republic of Korea, October 30, 2025 – The Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) signed a Memorandum of Understanding during the Global Green Growth Week 2025. The partnership aims to accelerate climate-smart and regenerative agriculture, resilient rural livelihoods, and green agrifood value chains in developing and emerging economies, in support of the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Agreement

The MoU was signed by Mr. Sang-Hyup Kim, Director-General of GGGI, and Mr. Aly Abousabaa, Director-General of ICARDA. The partnership brings together GGGI’s green growth policy and finance expertise with ICARDA’s decades of research-for-development in dryland agriculture to help countries convert strategies into bankable action.

Key areas of collaboration include:

• Policy & financing: strengthen governance and financing frameworks for climate-smart land use.
• Scaling solutions: accelerate adoption of climate-smart/regenerative practices through technology and capacity building.
• Green investment: mobilize public and private finance to convert strategies into bankable projects and resilient agrifood value chains.

“By pairing ICARDA’s science with GGGI’s expertise on policy and finance, we can turn climate‑smart agriculture into investable, job‑creating projects that boost rural incomes and resilience across the world’s drylands,” said Mr. Sang-Hyup Kim, Director-General of GGGI.

“Together we can take proven innovations from lab to landscape improving water productivity, restoring ecosystems, and building resilient livelihoods in some of the world’s most climate-vulnerable regions,” said Mr. Aly Abousabaa, Director-General of ICARDA.

About Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI)

The Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) was founded as a treaty-based international, inter-governmental organization in 2012 at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. GGGI supports its Member States in transitioning their economies toward a green growth model that simultaneously achieves poverty reduction, social inclusion, environmental sustainability, and economic growth. With 53 Member States and 30 Partner countries and regional integration organizations in the process of accession, GGGI delivers programs and projects in over 50 countries. These initiatives encompass developing innovative green growth solutions, technical support, capacity building, policy planning & implementation, and assistance in building a pipeline of bankable green investment projects, project financing, investments, and knowledge sharing. GGGI’s work contributes to its Member States’ efforts to fulfill the Sustainable Development Goals and the Nationally Determined Contributions to the Paris Agreement.

About International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA)       

The International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), a CGIAR Research Center headquartered in Beirut, delivers science-based solutions for resilient livelihoods across the world’s dry regions.

Media contacts       
GGGI Communications (HQ): communications@gggi.org         
ICARDA Communications: ICARDA-COMMS@cgiar.org