Blogs

All too often, value chain development harms the planet by emitting carbon and degrading environments. That’s why to build truly prosperous rural areas, we must make value chains not just strong, but sustainable.

Water stress is growing around the world. To effectively tackle it, a new approach assesses not only whether water infrastructure is available and working, but also whether it is meeting the needs of the people who rely on it. 

Why has the UN declared this year the International Year of Camelids? IFAD’s Country Director for Bolivia, Daniel Anavitarte, explains why you should care about these extraordinary mammals – and why they’re key to sustainable rural development in South America and beyond.

When climate and natural disasters strike, it’s rural people who are worst affected. Investing in their resilience ensures that they not only endure times of crisis, but emerge stronger. Associate Vice-President of Programmes Donal Brown explains how rural communities can change the world for the better.

Follow IFAD's journey at COP28, as we showcase efforts towards sustainable agriculture, climate resilience and food security, and raise the voices of rural people all over the world.

 

The Near East, North Africa, Europe and Central Asia is a dynamic region faced with many challenges. We caught up with Regional Director Dina Saleh to find out how rural people are coping with the realities of conflict and climate change and to understand why the right investments now can make all the difference later.

El Niño is back, and its effects are expected to have dire consequences for rural people. Oliver Page explains why we must do more to create a resilient, sustainable future in the face of this devastating climate phenomenon.

IFAD’s Regional Director for the NEN region, Dina Saleh, reacts to the disastrous events that have occurred in the region this week.

The Asia Pacific region is one of dizzying contrasts and incredible scale. We caught up with Regional Director, Reehana Rifat Raza, to find out the challenges faced by rural people in this dynamic region and how investment can make all the difference for their futures.

East and Southern Africa is home to a diversity of landscapes, people and challenges. We sat down with Regional Director Sara Mbago-Bhunu to talk about rural life and the importance of investment.

It’s time countries step up their investments and secure a climate-resilient future for small-scale farmers in Africa. Here’s how.

The line between getting by and going under is often all too thin. Disasters can immediately upend lives and reverse decades of progress and rural development. That’s why rural people also need their community, their country and their planet to be resilient.

Few storytelling mediums are more powerful than film. Find out how IFAD is using virtual reality and 360° video technology to ensure that rural people’s voices are heard.

As the world welcomes the historic UN agreement to legally protect high seas, we must also ensure that small-scale fishers continue to be protected.

An IFAD-FAO study from Lesotho provides valuable insight on how to mitigate against climate change while sustainably producing enough healthy food for everyone.

IFAD helps rural small-scale farmers reduce emissions while adapting to climate change. Find out how rearing insects as human food and livestock feed can achieve these goals.

As today’s young people grow into tomorrow’s adults, the impacts of climate change are simultaneously growing and worsening. Rural youth are valuable contributors to climate action. At COP27, we showcased the lives and ambitions of young innovators and activists. Find out what they had to say.

Meteorologist Clare Nasir travels to Nepal where she shares a homecooked meal with a local family and discovers how rural farming communities are adapting to the threat of climate change.

To respond to the impacts of climate change that are already happening around us every day, we urgently need to invest in climate adaptation. UNEP’s Adaptation Gap Report identifies the gap between where we are and where we need to be. Jo Puri shares her impressions on what this year’s report reveals.

Ahead of this year’s COP, President Lario shares three big wins for the planet that can mitigate climate change and help the world’s poorest rural people adapt to its inevitable impacts.

As the world faces a myriad of crises, experts fear that the progress rural women and girls have worked so hard for may be reversed. Here is how IFAD is working to prevent this.

Faced with the impacts of climate change, small-scale producers in Guatemala urgently need to manage risk using tools like insurance. Read how INSURED promotes the use of agricultural insurance to build resilience and strengthen livelihoods.

Reducing food losses makes food systems more sustainable. Although the exact causes are different for every crop and in every country, there are plenty of avenues to prevent, detect, and reverse these losses.

Discover hidden gems in rural Bangladesh with two IFAD colleagues as they visit a community-led eco-tourism project that has transformed the area.

Kenyan farmers and their crops face a tiny but destructive threat: the fall armyworm. With climate change causing more infestations, push-pull technologies are a sustainable and affordable way of naturally controlling pest numbers. Find out how this simple but effective technology works.

Following months of incessant rain, nearly one third of Pakistan is underwater. Millions of people are affected, thousands have died, and agriculture is at risk. IFAD’s Country Director in Pakistan reflects on what is happening on the ground.

On a recent trip to Guatemala and Honduras with the US Ambassador to the UN agencies based in Rome, IFAD Country Director, René Castro, explains how smallholder farmers are transforming rural communities despite the challenges of climate change.

Journalist and documentary maker Qasa Alom recently visited Bangladesh with IFAD. He reflects on how climate change is affecting its people and what IFAD is doing to support them.

We used GIS to assess the impact of IFAD-supported projects on the likelihood of conflict in fragile contexts. Our results suggest that the presence of IFAD interventions may prevent conflicts from arising and reduce the overall number of conflicts.

 

 

Just as the shadow of COVID-19 was lifting from many parts of the world, new crises have arisen – and they’re a particularly difficult challenge for poor rural people in developing countries.

“At the end of the day, restaurants are a luxury, but having food is a right. Everyone should have access to food.”

Groundwater depletion continues to be a challenge for small-scale farmers in the NENA region, despite the existence of water-saving technologies. Now, a new study is shedding light on ways farmers can improve their water efficiency – and where they can turn for help.

This International Women’s Day, we sat down with Steven Jonckheere, IFAD’s Senior Technical Specialist on Gender and Social Inclusion, for a conversation on why women’s land rights matter – and what IFAD is doing about it.

Last year, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake caused more than 2,200 deaths and US$2 billion worth of damage in southern Haiti. In February 2022, a Donors' Conference was held to seek financial and political support for the reconstruction and relaunch of the region.

For our people and planet to flourish, we need agrobiodiversity: agricultural systems that enhance our wealth of ecosystems and living beings instead of diminishing it. Our work has long recognized the importance of agrobiodiversity for sustainable food systems, and now we’re taking this commitment even further.

The term “food systems” encompasses a huge variety of activities and issues. To make sure we’re all starting from the same place, let’s focus on the fundamentals: the land, and how to treat it well.

It’s clear by now that no real progress on climate change mitigation will be achieved without the active participation of today’s top greenhouse gas emitters. In addition to transitioning their energy sectors away from carbon, actions such as making their agrifood systems more sustainable and promoting the use of natural carbon sinks could produce dramatic results in record time.

Peatlands store twice as much carbon as all the world’s forests and are home to everything from orchids to orangutans – but today, these lands are in peril. A partnership between IFAD and Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry is working to set a national policy agenda that will protect peatland ecosystems.

The fisheries and aquaculture sectors fully or partially support the livelihoods of 10–12 per cent of the world’s population. Yet fisheries across the world are under threat from climate change and over-exploitation. The question of how best to manage fisheries under these conditions is a complex one, but in our experience, bringing communities into inclusive governance structures is an indispensable part of the solution.

In early November, top experts from around the world will meet in Glasgow for COP26, the biggest climate change conference since the Paris Accords. We caught up with climate scientist and IFAD Associate Vice-President Dr Jo Puri to ask her what COP26 is all about and what she hopes will emerge from it.

Many countries in the Arab world rely on irrigation for their agricultural production. However, large-scale irrigation schemes have historically been difficult to manage. Small-scale schemes, when planned well from the outset, can be the solution.

The food we eat plays a role in not just our health, but that of our descendants. How we grow, hunt, fish or gather it, how we process it and bring it to market, affects the world around us. These simple relationships are the foundation of the climate–nutrition nexus.

Roots are the essence of farming: they erect healthy plants and help grant a predictable and generous harvest. The IFAD-supported ROOTS project seeks to promote exactly that strength in The Gambia.

Helping the people of the Sahel prosper requires a Great Green Wall stretching across Africa. IFAD is embarking on a series of projects to help build this “wall.” We recently sat down with the World Bank to learn from their successes and challenges across a decade of their own project implementations in this region.

Agroecology is a holistic approach that integrates elements of ecology, economy, and society within a food system. It also supports the well-being of small-scale producers, especially in terms of their empowerment and social inclusion. IFAD has a long tradition of supporting agroecology practices throughout Asia-Pacific, especially the Himalayas region.

Shifting cultivation is an indigenous food system practiced by millions of people across south and south-east Asia. A new resource book authored by Dr Dhrupad Choudhury, in collaboration with ICIMOD, is designed to guide policymakers and development professionals in sustainably transforming this practice.

Small-scale farmers and the rural poor have a crucial role to play in the restoration of ecosystems and the conservation of natural resources.

Despite standing to suffer immensely from the decline of biodiversity, agriculture is the lead driver of biodiversity loss, primarily through conversion and fragmentation of habitat and unsustainable intensification.

Renewable energy technologies are an increasingly important part of small-scale agriculture. IFAD’s S-RET project is bringing these technologies to farmers throughout Cambodia – and it’s recently been selected as a GEF Global Good Practice Project.

Livestock-based food systems can be climate-friendly if managed well. A new assessment tool is helping governments calculate and predict their livestock emissions for use in their NDCs.

Malnutrition, and the toll it takes on human health and societies, is directly linked with the health of our food systems. Creating sustainable, resilient and inclusive food systems will make lasting improvements in global health, nutrition and productivity.

Peatlands across south-east Asia have been cleared for agricultural purposes, leading to a sharp increase in fires. To reverse course, we need to transition to sustainable, fire-free peatland management practices.

"A passion for work is the fundamental ingredient of cooking."

People in rural areas, especially small-scale farmers, are among those most affected by climate change. The shifting climate has made weather patterns more unpredictable and weather-related events more extreme. 

Farmers that lack irrigation and rely on rainfed production are particularly vulnerable to drought. Fortunately, agricultural technologies, such as stress-tolerant rice varieties (STRVs), can help them adapt to climate change. 

According to UN reports, the Asia Pacific region is the most disaster-prone region in the world. Nearly 45 per cent of the world’s natural disasters occur in the region. 

In 2009, I travelled by road to Timbuktu, Mali on a short field trip. As we made our way down the dusty roads, I remember wondering what could possibly pull this arid, sparsely populated land into relative prosperity.

Poor rural people are among the hardest hit by climate change while contributing little to its causes. They deserve a fair share of climate finance to improve their resilience, and a seat at the table for the global climate talks.

As the world becomes more and more urbanized, many have suggested that cities hold the key to an efficient, sustainable future.

Risk and uncertainty intensify in the agriculture sector – especially throughout Africa.

For rural people, especially low-income rural people, land and livelihood are one and the same.

Reflecting on the fundamental role that sustainable food production and consumption plays in promoting food security and sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems.

Lack of access to seed is a common problem for small-scale farmers in Nepal and elsewhere.

Chef Lance Seeto is an icon of South Pacific cuisine. He’s also been a supporter of IFAD’s Recipes for Change campaign for more than five years now.

“I joined this project because I believe food can really change the world.”

World Environment Day is a day set aside to raise awareness about environmental issues and encourage protective action. This year’s theme is “Time for Nature.”

Resilience has become the talk of the town in the development community.

This year’s theme for the International Day for Biological Diversity is “Our Solutions are in Nature.”

On this day 50 years ago – the first Earth Day had just taken place – and a global movement was born.

Amidst the suffering and economic hardship caused by the COVID-19 emergency, one silver lining has emerged: an interruption to the greenhouse gas emissions and environmental degradation stemming from human activity.

Each of the world’s agricultural production systems had millennia to adapt to local climatic conditions, especially in terms of temperature and rainfall. 

I have always loved food - how it brings people together, the smells and flavours of new cultures. I guess I associate food most with gathering, communion.

Women in Ethiopia and the world over play a huge and growing role in farming and food production. 

Weather index insurance can protect and support smallholder farmers from climate-related disasters, providing them with means to buy food when harvests fail. 

As a chef, I believe that we have a responsibility and we should take concrete actions to tackle climate change.