REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, LONDON -- As small-scale farmers around the world seek to cope with climate change by adopting drought-resistant crops or methods to capture and store water, finding the money can be a problem, and interest rates on loans are often high.

But a new "climate-smart lending platform" aims to make credit easier and cheaper to access for farmers working to protect their crops, while helping lenders find customers who are a lower credit risk because their harvests are less vulnerable to extreme weather.

The platform, targeting 450 million small-scale farmers around the world, is one of four new projects that have won the backing of the UK-based Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance which hopes to channel enough cash, fast, to meet the global goals to curb climate change set last December in Paris.

"We need to make sure we are moving from thought to action after the Paris agreement, that we are getting new projects off the ground," said Barbara Buchner, director of the innovation lab and a senior director of the Climate Policy Initiative.