Fichas informativas

En tanto que organismo especializado de las
Naciones Unidas dedicado a erradicar la pobreza
rural en los países en desarrollo, el FIDA presta
apoyo a programas y proyectos con importantes
componentes relacionados con la ordenación de los
recursos naturales. En este sentido las actividades
encaminadas a combatir la deforestación, la
degradación de los suelos y la desertificación son
una parte central de las operaciones del Fondo.
En todos los documentos sobre oportunidades
estratégicas nacionales, que rigen las actividades de
préstamo y donación en los distintos países, se
plantea un enfoque integrado para mejorar los
medios de subsistencia mediante un mayor acceso a
los recursos naturales y su ordenación sostenible.

This report was prepared for informing IFAD‘s Country Strategic Opportunities Program (COSOP) 2012 – 2017 for Viet Nam. In preparation of this report a brainstorming workshop was held on 9 May 2011 in Hanoi bringing together key national research institutes working on climate change (CC) and environment related issues, ministries of agriculture and environment and bilateral and multilateral donors.

Una grave crisis alimentaria amenaza actualmente el Sudán meridional. En África oriental, donde millones de personas ya dependen de la ayuda alimentaria, se avecina un fuerte incremento de los precios de los productos agrícolas básicos. Estos no son más que los últimos motivos de preocupación en este período turbulento que se inició hace dos años, cuando muchos países de África y Asia se vieron afectados por situaciones de escasez de alimentos causadas por el alza de los precios a nivel mundial. El aumento de los precios de los alimentos sumió aún más en la pobreza a personas que ya tenían dificultades para satisfacer las necesidades básicas para la supervivencia humana. Inmediatamente después llegó la crisis financiera mundial, cuyos efectos también fueron más graves para los pobres. En la mayoría de países en desarrollo la agricultura es el sector que emplea más personas y el que genera más puestos de trabajo y el mayor nivel de exportaciones. El sector agrícola es el que siempre ha impulsado la economía de muchos países, generando un crecimiento que ha demostrado ser por lo menos dos veces más eficaz para reducir la pobreza que el de otros sectores. Así pues, las inversiones en el desarrollo agrícola y rural son vitales para la seguridad alimentaria y el desarrollo económico sostenible.

 En el mundo hay 1 400 millones de personas en situación de pobreza
extrema, que subsisten con menos de 1,25 dólares estadounidenses al
día. Alrededor de 1 000 millones de esos hombres, mujeres y niños
viven en las zonas rurales de los países en desarrollo.
Cerca de 2 000 millones de habitantes de las zonas rurales sobreviven
con menos de 2 dólares al día. Se trata, en su gran mayoría, de pequeños
agricultores y sus familiares, que dependen de la agricultura como medio
de vida.
En la actualidad, esas personas tienen que afrontar cambios rápidos y sin
precedentes: el cambio climático, el crecimiento demográfico mundial y la
volatilidad de los precios de los alimentos y la energía están sumiendo
cada vez a más personas en la pobreza extrema y el hambre.

 Since 1982, IFAD has supported seven projects in Syria with loans totalling US$126.2 million for projects with a total value of US$474 million. The organization has also provided a number of grants, including technical assistance grants to support women’s empowerment.

IFAD works in partnership with the government, other donors, NGOs, local institutions and civil society organizations. It finances initiatives which enable poor rural people in Syria’s agricultural settlement areas to improve their incomes and living conditions.

IFAD is working towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals and its interventions endeavour to reduce poverty and promote gender equality and environmental sustainability.

The project will reverse the decline in productivity of Eritrea’s soil resources;
restore vegetative cover and habitat diversity in areas of degraded rangelands,
forests and woodlands; and increase biodiversity within crop, livestock and
forest production landscapes.

The GEF-funded Agricultural and Rural Rehabilitation and Development
Initiative, which will complement the ongoing IFAD-financed Agricultural and
Rural Rehabilitation and Development Initiative Project (ARRDI), will similarly
focus on southern Niger’s Maradi region – home to 20 per cent of the nation’s
population – targeting poor and extremely poor communities vulnerable to
environmental risk, with special emphasis on women and youth.

Ethiopia is one of the world’s poorest countries, with an annual per capita income of only US$174. Nearly half of the population lives under the poverty line, and more than 12 million people are
chronically or periodically food insecure. Agriculture generates approximately 50 per cent of the GDP and 90 per cent of export earnings. Despite its importance, agricultural performance has improved little over the past 50 years and food security has deteriorated. Low agricultural productivity and chronic food insecurity are direct results of the ongoing degradation of natural resources in the
Ethiopian highlands.

This Decision Tools document is  the final outcome of five years of studies, debates and workshop discussions. These Tools will prove useful to Governments, development practitioners and field technical staff that are financing, designing or implementing CDD projects for rural poverty reduction.

Mobile signal coverage is expanding fast. More and more people own and use mobile phones and some are finding innovative ways to use them to enhance their earning potential. In the Republic of Tanzania, Internet connectivity is evolving rapidly, but few people in rural areas have access to the technology. The use of mobile phones and text messages, or SMS, is still far more widespread than e-mail. Yet the speed of change is dramatic. Communication technologies that allow wireless access within a 30-km radius are being extended throughout Tanzania and tests are verifying the feasibility of using GPRS modems in remote districts.

“It was important that we adapt quickly, looking for ways to ensure that everybody benefits
from these changes,” says Clive Lightfoot, technical advisor of the First Mile Project. “We want
to make certain that groups of people are not left behind and that the revolution is also
directed towards reducing rural poverty.”

The Arab countries account for more than 5 per cent of the world’s population, but less than 1 per cent of global water resources. And as a consequence of the phenomena associated with climate change, the region is facing an even greater water shortage.

For 30 years now, IFAD and its partners in the region have worked to develop effective, replicable solutions to help poor rural communities manage their scarce water resources. More than half of IFAD’s programmes and projects in the region include a focus on water. 

El FIDA ha aprobado seis préstamos para la República Bolivariana de Venezuela, por un monto aproximado de USD 80 millones. También ha aprobado dos donaciones de asistencia técnica, en 1991 y 1998 respectivamente, para el Programa Regional de
Capacitación en Desarrollo Rural, cuya ejecución estuvo a cargo de la Fundación para la Capacitación e Investigación Aplicada a la Reforma Agraria (CIARA), adscrita al Ministerio del Poder Polar para la Agricultura y Tierras.

El mandato del FIDA de reducir la pobreza mejorando las condiciones de vida y aumentando los ingresos de la población rural pobre afronta importantes desafíos y oportunidades. El FIDA trabaja en asociación con el Gobierno y otros donantes para financiar programas y proyectos destinados a la población más pobre, en particular los pequeños agricultores, los campesinos sin tierra, los pueblos indígenas y las minorías étnicas, así como a las mujeres del medio rural en general. Uno de los principales asociados del FIDA en los proyectos de desarrollo rural más recientes, la Fundación CIARA, cumple una función importante como administrador de programas de desarrollo en nombre del Ministerio del Poder Popular para la Agricultura y Tierras de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela.

IFAD is currently engaged in over 230 loan operations in 85 countries. About two thirds of that portfolio is related to community-based natural resource management.

Poor rural people and their institutions are at the core of this approach. Water is critical to these men and women pastoralists, fishers, farmers, young and old, part- or full-time, urban or rural, indigenous, tribal or otherwise often marginalized people. It is the key entry point for improving their livelihoods.

Climate change represents an additional challenge to rural people in SSA – and a further reason for investment in water control. Smallholder farmers, pastoralists and artisanal fishers are among the most vulnerable to this threat. 

While projections of changes in annual rainfall vary across Africa, these groups will experience the negative effects of increased temperature and
extreme events. For them, enhanced control of water will become critical in building resilience to increased climate variability.

Women constitute two-thirds of the 1.2 billion poor people in the world. The great majority live in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, regions that are also home to most of the world’s ‘water poor’ – those with limited access to reliable, safe supplies of water for productive and domestic uses. The role women play in reducing food insecurity and poverty – through their knowledge of multiple uses of water, crop production, local biodiversity, soils and local water resources – is recognized internationally. However, despite this, they are often still excluded from decision-making processes in new water management approaches and other natural resource allocation projects and initiatives. Globalization, changing market dynamics and climate change are altering the rural context for most poor rural people, resulting in increased vulnerability to natural hazards and economic uncertainties, above all for women. 

El trabajo del FIDA en Uruguay se desarrolla en dos niveles distintos aunque complementarios:

• a nivel subregional, en el marco de las instituciones del MERCOSUR, promueve una plataforma de diálogo entre gobiernos y asociaciones de pequeños productores, con el fin de aumentar la relevancia política de la agricultura familiar y la inversión pública en su favor;
• a nivel nacional, proporciona financiación y asistencia técnica al gobierno para la ejecución de programas y proyectos que traduzcan en acciones las políticas públicas definidas en el ámbito de la subregión y adaptadas al contexto del país.

There is a general consensus that rural areas and rural livelihood systems
will bear the brunt of climate change across the globe. More frequent
extreme weather events such as heat waves and intense precipitation are
likely to place the livelihoods of many rural people at risk. Africa is
expected to be the most vulnerable continent to climate change, and will
face a decline in both food security and agricultural activity, particularly
in relation to subsistence farming.

The impact of climate change on agriculture is expected to be
devastating in many parts of the developing world. Especially in the
least developed countries, declining crop productivity and livestock deaths
associated with further global warming pose a serious threat to food
security and national economies.
Nonetheless, vulnerability to climate change can be exacerbated by poverty,
marginality and low adaptive capacity. An integrated approach is
therefore needed to bridge the gap between local development and the
global challenge of climate change.

As a signatory to the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, IFAD is fully committed to management for development results (MfDR) as a means to improve development performance, not only in the programmes it supports, but also within IFAD itself: ‘focus on results’ is one of the organization’s core values.

IFAD has been working closely with the African Union (AU) and the New Partnership for Africa’s
Development (NEPAD) since they were established in July 2001, seeking new ways to combat rural
poverty across the continent. African leaders created NEPAD to promote sustainable development
and strengthen efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the international
community’s time-bound targets to meet the needs of the world’s poorest people. Within the
framework of NEPAD, the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) was
prepared in June 2002.

The main objectives of IFAD’s operations in the country are to improve food security and family nutrition. Since 1980, IFAD has supported agricultural development by investing a total of US$64.3 million in seven programmes and projects to reduce poverty in the country’s rural areas.
Normally, Lesotho is not in a position to grow enough food to feed its growing population. 

Offsetting the effects on poor households of declining agricultural production, IFAD investments support the efforts of small-scale farmers to ensure food security for their families and improve their incomes. Increased productivity is a key to achieving these aims and to reducing poverty in rural areas. IFAD finances programmes and projects that encourage poor people’s participation in the planning and development of income-generating activities, including microenterprises.