المعرفة

In June 2006, the World Bank and IFAD agreed to transfer the World Bank’s Grants Facility for Indigenous Peoples to IFAD. In September, the transfer was approved by IFAD’s Executive Board. This marked the beginning of the IFAD Indigenous Peoples Assistance Facility (IPAF), which issues public calls for proposals and makes small grants to support indigenous and tribal peoples throughout the world.  Development projects financed through IPAF aim to improve indigenous peoples’ access to key decision-making processes, empower indigenous peoples to find solutions to the challenges they face, and respond to indigenous peoples’ holistic perspectives. The projects build on indigenous culture, identity, knowledge, natural resources, intellectual property and human rights.

This report, prepared by an independent consultant, provides an overview of the performance of 53 small IPAF-funded projects in delivering results and improving the lives of their target groups. About 45,000 people directly benefited from these projects, and more than half of them were women. Project services reached about 1,200 communities. Primary project activities were training and individual capacity-building in such topics as security of tenure, natural resource management, agricultural technologies, traditional medicine, indigenous peoples’ rights, community programming, literacy and HIV/AIDS prevention.

Poor rural people in developing countries are vulnerable to a range of risks and constraints that impede their socio-economic development. Weather risk, in particular, is pervasive in agriculture. 

G20 leaders, meeting at their Seoul Summit in November 2010, requested FAO, IFAD, IMF, OECD, UNCTAD, WFP, the World Bank and the WTO to work with key stakeholders “to develop options for G20 consideration on how to better mitigate and manage the risks associated with the price volatility of food and other agriculture commodities, without distorting market behaviour, ultimately to protect the most vulnerable.” This mandate was part of a comprehensive Multi-Year Action Plan for Development, of which food security was one theme among several including infrastructure, human resource development, trade, private investment and job creation, and growth with resilience.

Climate variability and change are expected to compromise agricultural production and food security severely in many African countries. 

Trail Blazers: Stories of Women Champions from IFAD Projects presents snapshots of the lives and achievements of simple rural women from the project areas whose immense courage and dynamic leadership helped improve their own lives as well as the lives of their families and communities. 

This report is the fruit of that endeavour and builds on efforts by IWMI, IFAD and many others to document and understand the impacts of PIM. 

Through the systematic review of 24 IFAD-funded PIM interventions and field observations from 5 project sites in the Asian region this study sheds new light on what works, where and why. 

Our study examines WUAs that have been created by IFAD projects and those which pre-date it’s interventions but are the main focus of capacity building or restructuring. 

Fragile states are home to nearly 30 per cent of the
world’s poor people. Though measures of fragility
vary, such countries typically lack some of the
basic tools of nationbuilding: good governance,
strong policies, skilled personnel, functional
infrastructure and services, educated citizens, an active
civil society and a competitive private sector.
Civil and border conflict is an all-too frequent reality.
Poor people living in rural areas of fragile states are
particularly vulnerable as they have very limited
means to cope with the situation created by fragility.

The country’s challenge now is to create the conditions for economic growth – and the Government of Togo believes that the best way to achieve lasting growth is through increased production and productivity in the agriculture sector.

For these reasons, after more than a decade out of the country, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is working closely with the Republic of Togo to put agricultural and rural development on track.