Media backgrounder MB/07/08

Rome, June 16 – Poor rural farmers and herders in developing countries that bear the brunt of land degradation and desertification are also part of the solution, according to the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

Arid and semi-arid areas, from the peaks of the Andes to the semi-desert areas of Sudan are often remote and nearly always very poor.

Nearly half the world’s poor people live in dry and marginalised lands.

Ill-conceived agricultural practices, traditional or intensified, only make things worse as their poor populations have no choice but to adopt short term-survival methods putting more pressure on increasingly scarce local resources.

Climate change is increasing that pressure, and exacerbating droughts.

That is why 70 per cent of IFAD’s programmes are located in ecologically fragile and marginal environments.

IFAD works to turn these arid areas into productive agricultural regions and show that dry lands do not have to be wastelands.

For example, as part of its $US10 million programme in the drought-stricken Matam area of Senegal,  IFAD supports a project run by women using drop-by-drop irrigation that has become a profitable melon and okra enterprise, one that can keeping going even through periods of drought.

In north-east Morocco, IFAD has funded, for several years, a successful livestock project, bringing back the extraordinary array of natural herbs the animals feed on.

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Notes for Editors:

• Between 1999 and 2005 IFAD committed $US2 billion in loans and grants to programmes and projects relevant to land degradation and desertification.
• To halt desertification and combat land degradation short-term adaptation techniques must urgently be put in place to reduce the vulnerability of a population and improve farming resilience and techniques.  This would include a wide set of activities ranging from improved cropping systems and forest management to more efficient water use. 
• IFAD involves poor farmers in its agricultural research and builds upon their traditional methods to help them adapt to the new challenges.
• It also assists poor rural folk access new techniques such as hardier seeds that can withstand drought and flood.
• IFAD pays particular attention to the role of women in dryland management as they are often responsible for getting fuel and water and tending the fields.
• IFAD hosts at its headquarters in Rome the Global Mechanism, a United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification and Drought subsidiary body which helps UNCCD country parties manage and raise funds to halt desertification.
• IFAD is the second largest investor in the GM and its biggest donor. IFAD funds have enabled GM Action Plans in 29 different countries. This is in addition to IFAD’s role in providing technical and financial support to other UNCCD-related initiatives.
• IFAD believes that affected country Parties of the UNCCD, in particular those in Africa, need more external help to tackle land degradation effectively and in the context of their own domestic development programming.
• IFAD and the GEF are working together to fight both rural poverty and environmental degradation. They share a common understanding that it is difficult to achieve improvement in the global environment without sustainable management of natural resources and the enhancement of the livelihoods of rural poor people.
• IFAD is the lead agency of the MENARID programme that brings together all GEF agencies to promote integrated sustainable land management in the drylands of the Middle East and North Africa region. The main objective of MENARID is to advance the mainstreaming of sustainable land management, improving governance for natural resource management, and coordinating investments to decrease vulnerability to climate change and improve ecosystem resilience and integrity. 

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IFAD was created 30 years ago to tackle rural poverty, a key consequence of the droughts and famines of the early 1970s. Since 1978, IFAD has invested more than US$10 billion in low-interest loans and grants that have helped over 300 million very poor rural women and men increase their incomes and provide for their families.
IFAD is an international financial institution and a specialized United Nations agency. It is a global partnership of OECD, OPEC and other developing countries. Today, IFAD supports more than 200 programmes and projects in 81 developing countries and one territory.