North-Eastern Region Rural Development Project

North-Eastern Region Rural Development Project

The project addresses the growing stress in Syria between available natural resources and the demands on these resources from a rapidly increasing population. Its aims are to reverse the country’s severe water shortage and improve irrigation use. It supports the government’s efforts to improve the socio-economic well-being of poor rural households and conserve natural resources in the economically-depressed provinces of Deir Ezzor, Hassakeh and Raqqa. Project participants include poor smallholders, tenant farmers, landless people, rural women and unemployed young people.
 
The principal objectives are to:

• increase household income and food security
• increase employment and empower poor rural communities
• improve participatory management of natural resources, especially water
• promote a sustainable microfinance system
• establish partnerships with the private sector for exports of high value and organic products

Project activities focus on:

• improving communities’ capacity to organize and manage their own development through community-based organizations such as water users’ associations. Also, to provide community members with the technical and managerial capacity to improve their living standards
• supporting the government’s programme to increase and improve irrigation and conserve water. This will be done by empowering smallholders to reap the benefits of the programme, promoting optimal use of groundwater and water harvesting, and developing advanced water-use technologies
• improving poor farmers’ access to the services and technology they need to increase productivity and raise their incomes
• providing support for the development of small enterprises and micro-enterprises through a sustainable microfinance system and advisory services

The project supports the establishment of an irrigation water management policy development unit within the Ministry of Agriculture. This unit is to create a sustainable and fully participatory system for water management, and to facilitate the formation of water users’ associations.

Among the project’s innovative features are:

• promoting sustainable access to financial services  
• introducing a market-driven, business-oriented approach to agricultural production that links private exporters to producers though contracts with farmers’ associations
• promoting participatory water resource management through water users’ associations

Source: IFAD