The experience of IFAD The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) IFAD is an international financial institution and a specialized agency of the United Nations. IFAD was established in 1977 as a result of the recommendations of the World Hunger Conference of 1974 with clearly defined responsibilities - "to finance agricultural development projects primarily for food production in the developing countries" - and a clear and specific mandate - "to combat hunger and to eradicate rural poverty in the low-income food-deficit, marginal and resource-poor areas of the developing countries". IFAD's main objective is to provide direct funding and mobilize additional resources for programmes designed specifically to promote the economic advancement of the poorest of the world's people. The programmes aim at assisting small farmers, the landless poor, artisanal fishermen, nomadic and agro-pastoral herders and rural poor women to increase their food production, raise their incomes, improve their health, nutrition and educational standards and ensure their well-being on a sustainable basis (IFAD; 1998 and 1999). IFAD mobilizes resources and knowledge through a strategic, complementary and dynamic coalition of clients, governments, financial and development institutions, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the private sector. IFAD supports networking and information-sharing initiatives which aim at promoting the judicious and sustainable use of the rangeland and other, related natural resources. Such initiatives are supported by guidelines and measures established to assure compliance during project development (Environmental screening and assessment procedures in IFAD project design) and through support for the implementation of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) by hosting the Global Mechanism (GM).2 By responding to the expectations of its clients - the rural poor - and with their active participation, the Fund strives to design and implement innovative, cost-effective and replicable programmes that have sustainable impact. Most of IFAD's resources are made available to low-income countries on highly concessional terms, repayable over 40 years, including a grace period of ten years and a yearly service charge of 0.75%. Since its establishment, IFAD has financed 518 projects in 113 countries for a total commitment of approximately USD 6.4 billion in loans and grants. Beneficiary governments and other financing resources in the recipient countries have contributed over USD 6.7 billion, while another USD 5.7 billion have been contributed by external cofinanciers, of which bilateral donors have provided almost USD 1.0 billion, multilateral donors some USD 4.6 billion and various international NGOs USD 27 million. The era of change in donors' perspectives towards rangeland development IFAD started operations at a time when donors' support to livestock development was dramatically decreasing. Thus, the World Bank contribution declined from a peak of USD 1.0 billion each year to USD 200 million per year now (de Haan, 1999). Unfortunately, this fatigue or lack of interest occurred at a time when the international community was coming to realize that Western-type ranch-model projects were no longer the right approach towards sustainable development or the tool to reverse the exodus of marginalized pastoral communities to urban slums and shantytowns. IFAD's establishment also coincided with a worsening in rangeland degradation, especially around large numbers of donor-developed watering points (Tucker, Dergene and Newcomb, 1991; Tucker and Nicholson, 1998; Hellden, 1998), and the erosion of traditional community-management practices in areas declared as state property. For example, the Land Use Act of 1978 in Nigeria provided the state with ownership of all grazing areas. According to Gefu and Giles (1990), as reported in Ginat and Khazanov (1998), the availability of grazing areas in Nigeria declined from 67% in 1957 to 39% in the 1980s, while 90% of the stock remained with landless pastoralists. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the number of grazing animals increased sharply because of policies supporting supplemental feeding (Sidahmed, 1998), which favoured large herders, as well as poor farmers (Bayer and Waters-Bayer, 1995). Although supplemental feeding reduces the amount of intake from grazing per individual animal, the availability of year-round feed supplement allows the animals to stay continuously on the range, leading to depletion of the vegetative cover and soil degradation. However, these were also times when concern about the negative environmental impact of the sharp increase in livestock numbers began to attract global attention (Pendelton and Van Dyne, 1980). The late 1970s and early 1980s were also times when development workers started to understand that the poor adoption of intensive livestock-development technologies is not due to the ignorance of the poor herders, but rather to a lack of understanding about the economic and social circumstances of pastoral communities (Chambers and Ghildyal, 1985). Mainstreaming the interests of poor pastoralists into national economies Since its inception, IFAD has played a catalytic role in putting the issue of poverty eradication onto the agendas of governments, donors and funding institutions. IFAD's overall strategy has been to mainstream and incorporate the interests and needs of the rural poor into national economies (Sidahmed and Kesseba, 1997). Because most of marginal areas are drylands, a large number of the beneficiaries of IFAD investment projects, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, the Near East and North Africa, are pastoral and transhumance communities. More recently, IFAD's support has been extended to the inhabitants of dryland areas in Central Asia and the mountainous areas of Eastern Europe. As the Fund specifically targets the poor, IFAD's development strategies are based upon and determined by the microeconomic and social circumstances of the beneficiaries. The overall objective of IFAD projects is to empower rangeland users (financially, legally and technically) and support their efforts to become organized into homogenous communal associations. Thus, IFAD's approach in designing rangeland projects is consultative and participatory and strongly advocates putting pastoral communities and their local organizations "in the driver's seat". IFAD also takes into consideration the lessons learned by others (governments and bilateral and multilateral institutions) who were engaged in supporting previous rangeland projects (both successful and unsuccessful). As stated above, IFAD initiated operations when international and bilateral development institutions were rethinking and seeking new development options. Many institutions were soul-searching, and some were ready to acknowledge the validity of traditional practices and accept new ideas and paradigms. In IFAD's point of view, the people are the focal point of development, and their coping mechanisms are the benchmarks. IFAD has been instrumental in this process and has progressively incorporated need assessment and participatory appraisal techniques in project design and technology transfer. During its 20 years, IFAD has gained considerable experience in supporting rangeland user communities in performing the following functions:
Although IFAD loans are modest and seldom exceed USD 10- 15 million, their impact on user communities has gained acknowledgement and respect. Of the 518 projects funded between 1978 and 1998, more than 200 included livestock components, which shared between 2% and 100% of IFAD financing, or about USD 504 million. These projects directly benefited 73 million persons grouped in 13 million rural households (Table 1). Most of the projects, especially those in sub-Saharan Africa, the Near East, North Africa and Central Asia, target poor livestock producers and directly address the problems of range users. In addition, IFAD contributed USD 390 million in loans and USD 23 million in grants in order to assist 26 countries in sub-Saharan Africa affected by drought and desertification under the Special Programme for Sub-Saharan African Countries Affected by Drought and Desertification (SPA). About half of these projects directly addressed the problems of nomadic and transhumance communities. Table 1. Investment in livestock activities in loans financed by IFAD (USD million) and number of benefiting households and persons, 1978-99
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The GM was established under the authority of the Conference of Parties
to the UNCCD with a specific mandate: to promote actions leading to the
mobilization of substantial financial resources for the transfer of technology,
on a grant basis or on concessional or other terms to affected developing
country parties. The Conference of Parties, in its first session in October
1997, selected IFAD to house the GM as an organic part of its structure,
with a separate identity, and directly under the President of IFAD.
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