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Showing posts with label CFS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CFS. Show all posts

Enhancing adaptation capabilities of small-scale farmers to climate change

Posted by Ricci Symons Wednesday, November 2, 2016 0 comments

At the Forty-third session of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS 43), participants  met for an event where “Making a Difference in Food Security and Nutrition” was the subject of discussion.

The event was facilitated by Mark Davis, FAO Deputy Director of the Climate and Environment Division. It was a fairly informal panel with representatives from each of the Rome Based Agencies, and a representative from the World Farmers Organisation. The panel included: Alexandre Meybeck, Senior Policy Officer on Agriculture at FAO; Roshan Cooke, Regional Environment and Climate Change specialist at IFAD ; Tania Osejo, Climate Adaptation Specialist at WFP; and Mr Dyborn Chibonga, Chief Executive Officer at the National Smallholder Farmers Association on Malawi. During the  side event, panellists focused on experiences from local climate adaptation efforts to combat hunger and malnutrition.

Mark Davis opened by saying ''With a changing climate, agriculture needs to change way it operates too.''

In light of the Paris Agreement, rural communities and farmers have been urged to  take the lead as efficient agents of change to enhance adaptation capabilities to the negative impacts of climate change to food security and nutrition.

The event also  reviewed elements in various country–led climate adaptation plans, known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Ten INDCs actually name IFAD specifically as contributing towards their national adaptation priorities in the agriculture sector. “We need to move towards diversification for farmers - away from monoculture'', said Roshan Cooke, adding,'' Good results are already coming in from our adaptation work with smallholders."

Alexandre gave the FAO view by saying ''We need a multi stakeholder approach to working with  countries on their INDC targets and priorities that leverages each agency’s comparative advantages..''

Tania admitted that reaching the Sustainable Development Goals would put the Rome-based Agencies out of business. Achieving  zero hunger would mean WFP had done its job. Unfortunately we are not there yet. So in the meantime, 'we are trying to facilitate adaptation planning processes whilst linking communities to market and social infrastructure.''


Women in action and actions for women

Posted by Francesca Aloisio Friday, October 21, 2016 0 comments

by Francesca Aloisio

If women want to change their status they need to be the agents of that change. And social change is the goal of the Joint Programme on Accelerating Progress towards the Economic Empowerment of Rural Women (RWEE).

While it is still a pilot (it was launched in 2012) and underfunded, RWEE has already shown impressive results in terms of women’s empowerment and livelihood improvement. About 3,500 women have received training to improve agricultural technologies and farming methods, while a total of 18,000 women and their households have benefitted from it.

These results could not have been achieved if it wasn’t for a key word in the programme’s title: ‘joint’. RWEE is the result of the partnership of four UN agencies that came together to achieve gender equality in seven different countries around the world.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) work in close collaboration, handling different areas regarding their mandate, but all aiming to educate and empower women.

As mentioned by Lourdes Magana de Larriva, Advisor at the Delegation of the European Union to the UN, and co-chair of the Network for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment, rural women are more likely to be left behind despite the aim of Sustainable Development Goal number five: to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. RWEE recognizes rural women as key actors for sustainable development, working to realize women’s rights. We are talking about economic, social and political rights.

RWEE presented at a side event of the 43rd session of the Committee on the World Food Security (CFS). The full-house appreciated hearing about the success stories from Liberia, Guatemala, Nigeria, Kyrgyzstan, Ethiopia, Nepal and Rwanda, but also the challenges confronting the programme.

In Niger, women, men and young people gather together in groups to discuss the problems they face and to find solutions. "The interactions and exchanges among men and women have encouraged mutual understanding," says Biba Saley, leader of one of the Dimitra clubs established in Dosso, Niger.

Some of the women who turned their life around thanks to this programme include women in Niger; in Nepal; Ethiopia; Rwanda; and Kyrgyzstan.

One of the main actions to support the empowerment of women in themselves in rural communities is to improve their skills in agriculture. This leads us to the issue of food sovereignty.

Talking to Sophie Dowllar, from the World March of Women in Kenya, she points out the importance of food sovereignty and building a feminist economy as an alternative for women.

World March of Women is an international feminist action movement that aims at eliminating all forms of violence and discrimination against women and looks at the root causes of poverty. "Our priority is to ensure that women are free of hunger first, because we cannot say just be happy if you're hungry, we cannot say that we need peace and you're hungry," explains Sophie.

The beneficiaries of the movement are "Grassroots women who are tilling the land every day, who are connected with their families down there and that do everything they can to ensure that they have good food,” she says.

But what exactly is rural women economic empowerment? Empowering rural women has several meanings. It means enabling women to be recognized as a fundamental part of their community. It means teaching them how to read and write so they can go to the bank and sign a pay slip without help from others. It means building confidence. It means equal access to resources and food production increases. It means educating men and eliminating domestic violence.

Knowledge and resource sharing seems to be a primary ingredient for progress, as shown by the partnership of UN agencies in RWEE and by the World March of Women experience. In fact, every year, on April 24th, World March of Women celebrates with 24 hours of feminist action, where they exchange seeds across countries and build worldwide connections.

The road to achieve gender equality in rural areas is still long, but the initial steps seem promising!


This blog was originally written as the live coverage for CFS43.

#CFS42-Healthy diets from climate-smart food systems: Debating a climate-smart approach for a food-secure future

Posted by Ricci Symons Thursday, October 15, 2015 0 comments


The 42nd CFS event is currently being held at FAO. On Tuesday 13th October, IFAD and CGIAR hosted a side event: Healthy diets from climate-smart food systems: Debating a climate-smart approach for a food-secure future.

Amongst the speakers was Ska Mirriam Moteane, an award winning Lesothan chef, Hervé Saint-Macary, the deputy director of Persyst (Performance of Production and Transformation Systems ) at CIRAD. Other speakers included IFAD's Environment and Climate Division's agronomist Bertrand Reysset and University of Harvard Professor of Nutrition, Walter Willet.

Opening the event was CGIAR Chief Executive Frank Rijsberman, who underlined the importance of bringing together the themes of agricultural production, climate change, nutrition and food security.
''How do we produce healthy food, and importantly, how do we produce healthy food from sustainable food systems?,'' said Rijsberman. “Unhealthy food is a key driver in pushing our planetary boundaries, and we are now risking an unstable planet.''

The majority of agriculture investments are directed at producing staples such as cereals, and not towards vegetables and other means of diversifying a healthy diet.

'The world is overinvested in cereals and underinvested in nutritious crops,'' added Frank Rijsberman.

Modern agriculture can bring with it nutritional risks despite increasing real income. Under a gender perspective, commercial agriculture often  undermines the role of women in traditional agriculture.

”The potential to improveme diets worldwide is huge but the evidence so far suggests that as a planet we are heading down the wrong path,” said Harvard’s Walter Willet.

The importance of knowledge for healthy diets was also highlighted. Preparing healthy food requires extra knowledge. As we now have to produce more food with less natural resources we must use a wider diversity of crops and a more intelligent approach.  Disseminating this knowledge is key.


''We are seeing an increase in junk and unhealthy food being introduced even in Lesotho…this has to stop,” said Chef Ska Motoeane. ” Eating nutritious meals is seen as scary, like school work, a chore, but nutritious meals can still be appetising and delicious, and people need to know this!''
©FAO/Giulio Napolitano

©FAO/Giulio Napolitano

©FAO/Giulio Napolitano

©FAO/Giulio Napolitano

Rome-Based Agencies Talk Adaptation to Climate Change on Day 2 of CFS42

Posted by Christopher Neglia Wednesday, October 14, 2015 0 comments

At a Committee on World Food Security (CFS42) side event yesterday, representatives from the Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP) had an opportunity to present the programmes of their respective agencies, as well as to explain to an engaged audience how they are working together to realize the Adaptation and Innovation Potential of Smallholder Farmers and Rural Communities. 
Margarita Astralaga, IFAD
Moderator Martin Frick expressed the dilemma that confronts the international community. We live in a situation where 800 million people go to bed hungry every day, and Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 is committed to zero hunger by 2030. While this is an enormous challenge in itself, climate change adds even more complexity. 

“Risk has always been a dimension in agricultural development, but climate change has raised the magnitude, and altered the nature of risk,” according to Leslie Lipper of FAO’s Agriculture Development Economics Division. The costs of adapting to climate change, which can be significant, should not fall only on rural communities. That’s why FAO and WFP have both promoted safety net and cash transfer programmes that provide a basic income resilience to smallholders in some of the most food insecure regions.

“This is critical work, but safety nets and hand outs aren’t enough,” said WFP’s Inge Breuer. Increasingly, there is a need to combine such programmes with climate risk management systems. For instance, through cash-based transfers that incentivize rural people to participate in community adaptation projects. “We have a lot of work going on to optimize food systems and see what works best in rural communities. We are thinking about how we can leverage these cash transfers to encourage new economic opportunities,” Breuer said. 

Similarly, Margarita Astralaga, Director of IFAD’s Environment and Climate Division said that adaptation to climate change should not be done on an ad hoc basis, which may create winners and losers in rural areas; rather, adaptation investments should aim to increase the resilience of the entire food system. Astralaga brought up the work being done in the CALIP project in Bangladesh, where IFAD is partnering with local universities to enhance climate modelling for a flash flood early warning system. In this way, rural women and men living in the vulnerable Haor Delta will have access to more accurate, real-time climate information, which can afford them the ability to protect their rice crops, a vital income source.

Finally, Beat Roosli of the World Farmers’ Organization (WFO) asserted that secure access to productive resources is a central factor when farmers’ decide whether to make adaptation investments in their farms. “In this regard, climate change and land tenure are inextricably linked,” he said. This also raised the question of farm-size, and whether it’s better to optimize productivity on each farm unit, or focus on aggregating small plots, thereby scaling up adaptation investments. “The question of farm size is secondary at first, Roosli suggested, “Farmers may have to scale up later, but first they must become more productive with the resources they have.” 

Climate-Smart Agriculture and Gender Side Event Held at CFS42

Posted by Christopher Neglia Monday, October 12, 2015 0 comments

With the 42nd Committee on World Food Security (CFS) going on this week at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome, IFAD today participated in a side event, entitled Climate-Smart Agriculture and Gender — Evidence for Equitable, Food Secure and Sustainable Agriculture. Clare Bishop Sambrook, lead technical specialist for gender at IFAD led off the discussion. She posited that as climate change becomes a more pressing issue for small agricultural producers, resilient techniques will become more intentional and explicit in their business processes. This may translate into planting more fodder crops in pastoral contexts, or growing more fruit trees in tropical food systems. She said that IFAD’s gender-focused interventions are primarily concerned with addressing women’s shortage of time and voice. 

Time. Rural women spend many hours of the day traveling to obtain firewood or water for their households. In the dry season, water may be further away, and as deforestation spreads, firewood may be difficult to find. Therefore IFAD is piloting a flexibiogas system, which generates enough energy for domestic cooking and lighting needs. The environmental dimension is that flexi biogas reduces methane emissions from livestock, and has the potential to alleviate human pressure on forest resources. The system is being piloted in a growing number of projects, thus far in Kenya, Rwanda, Mali, Cambodia and India. 

Voice. Gender dimensions are a constraint on the development of women. Household methodologies are something that IFAD has been doing in the context of climate change and gender equality as a practical household planning exercise that promotes the contributions of women to the household and create goals to work towards.

Dr. Martin Frick, Director of Climate, Energy and Tenure Division at FAO next discussed the need to recognize the different realities of rural men and women in the design and application of interventions, including in the area of climate-smart agriculture. When speaking about improvements in productivity, Frick argued that the solution was not always technologies. If women had the same access to resources as men, the extra output could reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 12 - 17 per cent, he said.  

The issue of measuring women’s empowerment was raised by Vera Weill-Hallie, Chair of Women Organizing for Change in Agriculture and Natural Resource Management (WOCAN). The organization has developed a certification label, the W+ Standard, that endorses projects that create increased social and economic benefits for women participating in economic development or environment projects. In terms of climate change and gender, Weill-Hallie cautioned that more analytical work on gender and climate-smart agriculture needed to be done, and signalled that the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) submitted by countries to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) did not place a sufficient focus on gender. 

The final speaker was Marc Sadler, World Bank Adviser on risks and markets in agriculture. He talked about the different adaptation methods adopted by men and women in response to climate-related risks. Indeed, gender is seen as a one of the main determinants of farmers’ choice of adaptation methods. These factors must be identified at the outset of a project if it’s gong to be able to achieve results, Sadler argued. 

Building resilience to crises in the Arab world

Posted by Beate Stalsett Wednesday, January 14, 2015 0 comments

By: Perrihan Al-Riffai, Sr. Research Analyst – IFPRI and Nerina Muzurovic, Knowledge Management Officer - IFAD

©FAO/Alessia Pierdomenico

In a well-attended side event titled: Building Resilience to Crises in the Arab World at the 41st meeting of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) in Rome, October 17th, 2014, IFPRI in collaboration with its development partners, CGIAR’s Policies, Institutions and Markets Research Program, FAO’s Regional office for the Near East, IFAD/NEN and UN-ESCWA presented the results of recent studies on food security in the Arab Region and launched the Arab Food and Nutrition Security Blog.

In the Arab World, food insecurity is not only a consequence of conflict, it is also a major cause of civil conflict, more so in Arab countries than in the rest of the world. Recent events such as the food price riots in 2007-08 and the Arab uprisings in 2010-11 seem to confirm the role of food insecurity as a catalyst to political instability and civil conflict. In short, emphasized Mohamed AwDahir, the regional food systems economist at FAO’s Near East Region, “peace is fundamental to food security, and food security is fundamental for keeping peace.”

Policies, programs, and projects that build resilience and improve food and nutrition security are likely to also reduce conflict was one of the key messages Olivier Ecker, research fellow at IFPRI, had during the session. Resilience-building policies and programs should focus on increasing the opportunity costs of conflict participation (through e.g. rural development, employment and income generation, social safety nets, human capital formation) and programs and projects that adopt a participatory, demand-driven approach and support social inclusion and cohesion (e.g. IFAD’s projects in Dhamar and Al-Dahla, Yemen) tend to be more successful in building resilience for food and nutrition security and conflict prevention.

Improving policies and interventions will require more and better information, as well as monitoring and evaluation, highlighted Khalida Bouzar, IFAD’s Director of the Near East, North Africa and Europe Division who also chaired the side event. Data availability as well as access to existing data across the Arab World is difficult leading to a limited scope for improving evidence-based decision making as well as the monitoring and evaluation of projects.

Regional interagency collaboration is emerging as a powerful mechanism to enhance institutional effectiveness and impact on the ground, including intergovernmental processes at regional and global levels. In order to improve the knowledge base for the Arab World, IFPRI, under the leadership of Clemens Breisinger, senior research fellow at IFPRI, in collaboration with development partners, IFAD, UN-ESCWA and CGIAR-PIM, helped build a knowledge platform for the Arab World known as Arab Spatial. “Arab Spatial, is the first open access interactive atlas and data repository for the Arab World”, explained Perrihan Al-Riffai, senior research analyst at IFPRI. The Arab Food and Nutrition Security Blog, co-financed by the IFAD grant on “Decreasing Vulnerability to Conflict in MENA through Rural Development” and chaired by Nadim Khouri, Deputy Executive Secretary of the UN-ESCWA aims to further inform the food and nutrition security debate through expert opinions and provide a platform to address them across the Arab World.

More regional collaboration is needed for the Arab World to build its resilience to crises. Emerging challenges, include; addressing conflicts and their regional spillover effects, trade policies, transportation and infrastructure, water and energy, research and development, and sustainable flows of direct foreign investment need to be addressed at the regional level. “Building resilience means helping people, communities, countries, and global institutions prevent, anticipate, prepare for, cope with, and recover from shocks and not only bounce back to where they were before the shocks occurred, but become even better-off.”

Innovative Investments in Agriculture and Food Security – CFS Side Event

Posted by Christopher Neglia Thursday, October 16, 2014 0 comments

Innovation in the agricultural sector was the topic of a side event held last Wednesday during the Committee on World Food Security (CFS 41) at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) building in Rome. Moderated by IFAD’s Gernot Laganda, panellists Richard Choularton (World Food Programme [WFP]), Andrea Cattaneo (FAO) and Santiago del Solar (Consorcios Regionales de Experimentacion Agricola [CREA]) contributed their perspectives on how innovation is generated, and how it is eventually adopted and used in the field.

In his initial remarks, Choularton proposed that innovation has a lot to do with failure. According to Choularton, previous donor investments secured incremental gains for small farmers, which every few years were wiped away by natural disasters such as droughts or floods. Perceiving the recurrence of these events, WFP developed a micro insurance scheme specifically tailored to improve the climate risk management of people with very few assets. The product is proving to be attractive to small farmers since they have the option to pay for premiums with their own labour. In Senegal and Ethiopia where this programme is active, insured farmers have been able to save more than twice the sum compared to those without any insurance, and they invest more in productive inputs.

However, innovation does not arise unswervingly. The long-term sustainability of the programme is not assured since, as Choularton conceded, about 80 percent of the cost of premiums is subsidized. And while small farmers enjoy the current work-for-insurance modality, it is unlikely private insurance companies would operate on the basis of in kind transfers. Nevertheless, it does not mean that this undoubtedly innovative financial mechanism cannot evolve in the context where the service is being provided, and actually facilitate a market for cash paying farmers. Indeed, the growth of farmers’ mutual insurance was a gradual process in Europe and North America.  

Andrea Cattaneo described the persistence of bottlenecks that can hinder innovation from taking hold. This can occur when, for example, policies are implemented unevenly, or establish perverse incentives, creating what he called ‘binding constraints’. Cattaneo also emphasized that innovation should be addressed in a broader system – through socioeconomic and climate  perspectives and trying to link the tailored solutions to specific National Agricultural Investment Plans.

Santiago del Solar representing the World Farmers Organizations through CREA (Consorcios Regionales de Experimentacion Agricola), an Argentine organization of  farmers dedicated to improving each farming enterprise, also offered edifying examples of how innovation can take hold in the most inhospitable of circumstances. Years ago, his group noticed that erosion and soil degradation were destroying agricultural land. The innovation they came up with was no-till technology, which at the time was not used in the Argentine countryside. Del Solar explained that when he first practised no-till, he made many mistakes. His own father criticized him because he would not use a plough like other farmers. But a generation later – 95 percent of Argentine farmers are using no-till farming methods. Nothing short of a revolution. In his words, innovation in the field occurs  because “farmers believe other farmers”.

What became salient to me during this session, was that innovation does not always occur within the timescales we prescribe. New behaviour and technologies are rarely inculcated within the span of a project. But, as Gernot Laganda offered in his summary, we should work to support innovation by identifying and addressing the financial drivers, institutional pathways and policy spaces that both define and negate agricultural paradigms. By training our efforts on change in these areas we can overcome the binding constraints that limit farmers’ abilities to realize their full potentials. 

How does climate change alter the way we manage agriculture for food security?

Posted by Marjolein van Gelder Friday, October 11, 2013 0 comments


One year after the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE) published a report on Food Security and Climate Change, the two spheres of climate change and food security have come closer together. Previously, Climate Change was a topic mainly discussed by the countries with high carbon emissions and the focus was solely on mitigation. On the other hand, food security always focused on the world's poor - often living in countries with low emissions. The panel, which conducts research and advises the Committee on Food Security (CFS), seeks to bridge these two issues. A side event, which was held at the CFS, discussed the importance of bringing together both worlds and showed how far this has progressed.     

The importance of mixing both worlds comes from the fact that the people who are most food insecure, are also the ones who are most vulnerable to extreme weather events, caused by climate change.

Prof. Swaminathan pointed to the example of the Punjab, India, explaining  that a warmer climate means that the growing seasons for staple crops will become shorter. Only one week less of the growing season can have tremendous effect on yields in the region. In certain situations, rising temperature requires famers to be proactive in cultivating new crops, as the traditional crops are not viable. This can, however, be a great problem, according to Alexandre Maybeck (FAO). He asked  "How to teach a farmer what is important  to secure his food supply 20 years from now when he does not even know how to feed his family today?”

The publications by HLPE and the discussions at CFS had an impact at the climate negotiations at the last climate COP. Maybeck believes that one year after the climate change discussion at CFS this has influenced the way we talk about it. "The two different sectors started to speak to  each other. The HLPE report helped as a good common starting point". In addition, the other two Rome-based agencies have set up programmes in which climate change and small holder agriculture are combined.

"Many people ask me: why is the World Food Programme (WFP) involved in these topics? For us it is quite simple: climate change will create more shocks and disasters:" Richard Choularton explains. "The Rural Resilience Initiative aims to build community resilience on food security and increases the safety nets that are required to deal with food shortages. Actually 98% of what we do is risk reduction."

The WFP, for example, invests in livelihood diversification so farmers are not depended on one source of income. They have, additionally, taken up the advice of an Ethiopian farmer who asked to work for his insurance as he could not afford to pay for it. Chourlaton says that these initiatives are promising. Choularton was asked whether working more hours for insurance did not represent a burden for farmers. He explained that great attention was paid to the labour demand on farmers, and that community labour was never requested during their own farming season, but rather in low-demand labour times, a system that worked well for the farmers.
 
Another cross-cutting programme is the Adaptation for Smallholder Programme (ASAP) by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). Elwyn Grainger-Jones explained that the main goal of ASAP is to make climate change finance available for smallholders. "Climate change alters the way we do projects as it forces us to take into account much more risks. We have, for example, projects that introduce more saline resistant crops to adapt to sea level rise, or early warning systems which can help farmers prepare when bad weather is coming".

This CFS session has shown the importance of combining  climate concerns and food security. Many agencies have started to bridge the institutional gap and combine the two topics. However, it will take time before integration of the two separated worlds will be complete.