Rome, 19 June 2009 – Ethiopia loses about 2 billion tons of fertile soils to land degradation each year. As waterways silt up, irrigation development and the generation of clean energy are seriously hampered.

To help Ethiopia meet these challenges, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is providing a US$6.6 million loan and a US$6.6 million grant for the Community-based Integrated Natural Resources Management Project.

The financing agreement for this project was signed today in Rome by Ato Grum Abay Teshome, Ambassador of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia to Italy, and Kevin Cleaver, Assistant President, Project Management Department, IFAD.

The project seeks to enhance access by poor rural people to natural resources (land and water), and it will promote sustainable land management practices to improve agricultural production and productivity.

Co-financed by the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), the project will protect, conserve and rehabilitate some 15,000 km2 of degraded lands in the Lake Tana Watersheds, which will improve agricultural productivity, food security and incomes for about 450,000 poor rural households that depend on agriculture as their primary or only source of livelihood.

The IFAD-funded project will also help mitigate climate change by increasing carbon sequestration, which will contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Press release No.: IFAD/32/09

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) works with poor rural people to enable them to grow and sell more food, increase their incomes, and determine the direction of their own lives. Since 1978, IFAD has invested over US$11 billion in grants and low-interest loans to developing countries, empowering some 340 million people to break out of poverty. IFAD is an international financial institution and a specialized UN agency based in Rome – the UN’s food and agricultural hub. It is a unique partnership of 165 members from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), other developing countries and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).