A day for all to be reminded that if the Earth's resources are not nurtured and cared for now, there will be little left for future generations.

The primary goal of most IFAD-supported projects is to further rural development, mainly through agricultural production, and to increase poor farmers' incomes.

Approximately 70% of IFAD's rural poverty-alleviation projects are located in ecologically fragile, marginal environments. In these areas, the poor are often locked into patterns of natural resource degradation by their lack of access to productive resources, institutional services, credit and technology. Without these resources they are compelled to overstrain land already experiencing erosion in order to survive. The need to address the environmental implications of poverty alleviation has been an outgrowth of the Fund's work in marginal areas.

Many aspects of natural resource and environmental management cut across regions: increasing beneficiary and community participation, developing and sharing environmentally friendly technologies, fostering environmental policies, and promoting rural finance to encourage off-farm income-generating activities and microenterprise to help take the pressure off natural resources. Other cross-cutting issues are gender and indigenous knowledge. The causes and effects of environmental degradation, however, vary considerably across regions, countries and agro-ecological zones, creating a great diversity of national-resource management (NRM) issues. One of the key challenges thus is to tailor solutions to the needs of each particular area.

A major concern in western and central Africa is land and water degradation, caused largely by the spread of desertification and the growing scarcity of arable land surface, groundwater and rangeland. As growing populations turn to wooded lands for cooking fuel, timber and expanded agricultural activity, the resulting depletion of forests is compounding the problem. In response, IFAD is emphasizing sustainable approaches to agricultural intensification, while promoting appropriate technologies, community empowerment, informed decision-making and policies that support NRM.

One of the important lessons learned is that technologies built on local practices result in less negative impact on the environment than those of standardized, high-input technologies. In addition, they have a greater chance of success because they respond to the priorities of the local population.

In an innovative project in Niger, irrigation work has been turned over to termites. The so-called tassa technique involves digging holes some 15-20 cm deep and then using the unearthed soil to build protective ridges around the hole. The hole bottoms are covered with manure, which becomes a breeding ground for termites. The termites bore through the hard-baked soil, producing a delicate network of tunnels. When the rains come, the holes and tunnels fill with water, and farmers plant millet or sorghum in them without having to overexert themselves.

Local farmers in Burkina Faso have 'sculpted' scalloped patterns of half-moons into the slopes of their lands to catch and retain rainwater.

Natural resource degradation is a serious problem in eastern and southern Africa, a region that suffers from deforestation, loss of soil fertility, soil compaction, water scarcity and overgrazing. The major areas of concern are halting and reversing deforestation and the degradation of pastures, controlling erosion and managing soil, soil moisture and water, recovering and conserving marine resources and conserving biodiversity.

The Zambia Forest Resource Management Project, for example, has embarked on a series of community-based activities to raise incomes and enhance the sustainable use of forest resources. One major initiative is woodlot planting, which is carried out by communities for their own use and for sale, and should reduce cutting in natural forests. In Lesotho, the Machobane farming system, named after its local inventor, was used in the Soil and Water Conservation and Agroforestry Programme. This system replaces traditional monocropping with intensive relay-cropping along contours in order to control erosion and conserve moisture. It enhances soil fertility by using wood ash and farmland manure. The system also emphasizes intensive farmer training (mostly farmer-to-farmer), a high level of participation and empowerment of smallholders.

The main environmental problems facing poor farmers in Asia and the Pacific are: land and water degradation, sedimentation of watercourses, loss of forest resources and biodiversity, and degradation of fisheries. Special attention is being given to programmes in marginal areas, i.e. the upland and mountainous areas, which were the hardest hit in 1997 by the Asian financial crisis.

Soil conservation is an important NRM activity in the region. Experience has shown that poor farmers often do not have the time and cannot provide the labour to take part in slow and costly remedial operations to restore soil fertility. For this reason, many projects aim to improve production and soil conservation simultaneously. For example, the East Java Rainfed Agriculture Project in Indonesia involved beneficiaries in a participatory planning process and provided incentives, including food rations supplied by the World Food Programme. On-farm soil-and-water conservation works included improved bench terraces to optimize soil and water retention, drainage channels, gully plugs and minor drop structures to control the flow of excess water. The project also introduced grasses and forage plants for erosion protection and livestock feed. Among the project's results was a 60% increase in net returns per unit of food crop.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, concern for the environment is not an end in itself, but is viewed by IFAD as going hand in hand with the sustainable reduction of poverty. This concern is expressed - and addressed - in about 30 of IFAD's ongoing projects in the region (60%) that emphasize protection of biodiversity and the management of renewable natural resources for agricultural production, particularly soil and water. The Management of Natural Resources in the Southern Highlands Project in Peru, for instance, aims to rehabilitate the natural-resource base so that poor farmers can produce traditional knowledge with modern techniques for improved soil and water management. The Project for the Capitalization of Small Farmers in the Tropisec Area of the Segovias - Region I (TROPISEC) in Nicaragua also takes an integral approach, seeking to enhance plant and animal production through collective action to establish multi-purpose trees, improve watershed management and reforest degraded lands.

The region's vulnerability to frequent natural disasters is heightened by environmental degradation, deforestation and mismanagement of watersheds. Projects to cope with the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch in Central America include technical interventions in rural areas to improve land and watershed management and thereby reduce ecological vulnerability. At the same time, they promote the active participation of civil society in poverty-reduction programmes to decrease social vulnerability.

The major environmental threats in the Near East and North Africa are drought, desertification and soil/land degradation. These threats are, to a great extent, both the cause and an effect of rural poverty. Climatic conditions, rangeland mismanagement and overgrazing have led to severe land degradation. Projects are increasingly designed with NRM as part of the overall rationale and as a core objective.

In Jordan, the first generation of projects (before 1995) focused on building the capital of the rural poor; the second generation (approved since 1995) addresses poverty through NRM, particularly soil and water conservation and rangeland management. For example, the Yarmouk Agricultural Resources Development Project takes a participatory approach, with innovative measures to ensure empowerment of the poor through access to productive resources and decision-making. Conservation measures are based on a sustainable land-use plan that was prepared with the participation and approval of the communities. Water conservation, spring protection and rehabilitation works are approached through water users' associations, where members participate in group planning, design and implementation. They also contribute to the initial costs of the work and make a commitment to operate and maintain the newly created assets.

Collaboration in Global Initiatives

IFAD provides policy and technical assistance to national and regional programmes in its Member States. In addition, in support of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD), the Fund is providing assistance in the preparation of national action programmes and subregional programmes, and has recently started working with governments - through the Global Environment Facility (GEF) - to develop projects addressing global environmental problems. In 1997, the Global Mechanism (GM) was established under the authority of the Conference of the Parties of the CCD. GM, which is housed at IFAD, serves as the hub for a dynamic network of partners that have committed resources and knowledge to combating desertification.