Recursos

El agua tiene una importancia fundamental para el desarrollo humano, el medio ambiente y la economía. El acceso al agua y la seguridad hídrica son primordiales para mejorar la seguridad alimentaria, los ingresos y los medios de vida de las comunidades rurales. La falta de acceso seguro a los recursos hídricos es una gran limitación para millones de agricultores pobres, principalmente los que habitan en zonas de secano, pero también aquellos que realizan una agricultura de regadío. El cambio climático y los cambios que ocasiona en los patrones de las precipitaciones representan una amenaza para muchos otros
agricultores, quienes se encuentran en riesgo de perder la seguridad hídrica y caer nuevamente en la trampa de la pobreza. Por lo tanto, es preciso insistir en la necesidad de fortalecer la capacidad de las comunidades para adoptar y difundir las tecnologías de gestión del agua para uso agrícola.

IFAD recently resumed operations in Cuba after more than 20 years. The official launch of the Cooperative Rural Development Project in the Oriental Region (PRODECOR) took place on 30 October 2014.
Given the challenges the agricultural sector faces, IFAD is in a position to serve as one of the country’s strategic partners, contributing to the ongoing modernization process.
Cooperatives in Cuba are key actors in ensuring food security, as they represent 80 per cent of the country’s agricultural production. The Government of Cuba has expressed interest in re-establishing the partnership with IFAD with a view to modernizing agriculture.
This will be achieved mainly through developing non-state smallholder farmer business cooperatives. In this respect, IFAD is well placed to provide technical assistance through its projects to increase the physical, human, social and environmental assets of cooperatives.

Con una cobertura de telefonía móvil que por lo general se extiende a más del 90% de la población, incluso en los países en desarrollo, la posibilidad de realizar transacciones bancarias por medio de teléfonos móviles (lo que se conoce como “banca móvil”) abre la perspectiva de sortear muchos de los obstáculos con que actualmente se enfrentan los receptores de remesas de las zonas rurales.

When we look at the world today, we see impressive gains as well as daunting challenges. The Millennium Development Goal target of halving extreme poverty rates was met at the global level five years ahead of the 2015 deadline. There are now more than 100 middle-income countries, as diverse as Brazil, Lesotho and Vanuatu. It is estimated that developing countries’ share of the global middle-class population will rise from 55 per cent today to 78 per cent by 2025. 

However, amid rising affluence in some countries and regions, there is also growing inequality. In 2015, there will still be 970 million people living in poverty – the vast majority of them in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. And there remain 842 million chronically undernourished people in the world. Volatile commodity prices bring hunger to the poorest, and instability to markets and societies. Climate change and environmental degradation throw long shadows over all of humanity’s gains. Against this background, we must confront the question of how humankind is going to continue to feed and sustain itself in the future.

This new IFAD strategy responds to these global developments and calls for IFAD to be more systematic and proactive in engaging with the private sector.

The new strategy specifies how IFAD intends to deepen its engagement with the private sector (be it small, medium, or large; domestic, regional, or international companies) with the aim of creating markets for its target groups; improving their access to inputs, services, knowledge and technology; and increasing income-generating or job-creating opportunities for its target populations. For more information please click on the link below. 

This coming year could determine not only whether the world rises to the considerable challenges now facing it—climate change, persistent hunger, increasing inequality, stubborn poverty—but also affecting the fate of generations to come. With a growing population that will exceed 9 billion by 2050, the increasing effects of climate change, a widening gap between rich and poor, and growing competition for resources, the major issues facing humanity cannot wait. Deliberation must give way to deliberate action.

But the global political will to eradicate extreme poverty, hunger and malnutrition within a generation, and the conviction that this is achievable, are growing. An ambitious agenda is emerging in the process of identifying post-2015 development goals. It aims to end poverty everywhere in all its forms, and to end hunger and achieve food security. And it plans to do so sustainably. This would perhaps be one of the greatest steps ever taken to secure the future of humanity and the life of the planet.

El FIDA ha obtenido importantes resultados en la promoción de enfoques y procesos innovadores de incorporación de la perspectiva de género y favorables a las personas pobres en sus operaciones. 

Three quarters of the poor population in West and Central Africa – about 90 million people – live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. More than 60 per cent of the active population work in the agriculture sector. Women’s share – estimated at 70 per cent in the region as a whole and 89 per cent in the Sahel – continues to rise. Socio-politically, West and Central Africa is still very fragile, with the highest concentration of countries with IFAD operations. Despite this fragility and the poverty that affects over half the population, virtually all countries in the region have made considerable progress over the past decade, particularly in education, health and income redistribution. 

In Tunisia, young women managed to set up their own small enterprises that produce and sell Al margoum, a traditional embroidery of Berber origin that was on the verge of disappearing.