This Country Programming Framework (CPF) sets out three government priority areas to guide the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) partnership and support with the Government of Mozambique – bringing together innovative international best practices and global standards with national and regional expertise during 5 years from 2016 to 2020.
Mozambique is the 8th most vulnerable country to climate change and is one of the poorest countries in the world with a high dependency on foreign aid. The population is primarily rural and dependent on agriculture, with 60% living on the coastline. Droughts, flooding and cyclones affect particular regions of the country and these are projected to increase in frequency and severity.
Under Mozambique’s Constitution and Land Law (1997), communities may legally govern their lands and natural resources according to customary norms and practices, so long as local customs do not contradict national law. However, rising land scarcity and associated increases in land value are leading some families to “reinterpret” custom as sanctioning the dispossession of widows from their marital lands.
Despite expanding policy commitments in many poor countries, health care is often a failure at the point of delivery. Lack of information, poor enforcement, and power dynamics prevent those whose rights have been violated from pursuing redress. In Mozambique, grassroots health advocates work to address this gap between policy and reality by blending approaches known as legal empowerment and social accountability.
This report is a product of a partnership between Terra Firma and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), contributing to a study of changing land access in sub-Saharan Africa supported by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
ACES is a three-year (2014 -2017) research project that is being implemented in Mozambique with the main purpose being to contribute to poverty alleviation in Mozambique by co-producing new knowledge of the dynamic links between land use change, Ecosystem Services (ES) and the wellbeing of the rural poor and thereby meet the demand from policy makers and practitioners for ways to better manage Mozambique’s woodlands (Dewees et al. 2008; Wiggins et al. 2012).
Mozambique currently has one of the highest rates of land concessions throughout Africa. In the coming years, if large-scale land concession grants to private investors are not carefully controlled, the amount of land still held and managed by rural Mozambicans will decrease significantly, with associated negative impacts on already impoverished rural communities.
The Testing REDD+ in the Beira Landscape Corridor of Mozambique initiative closed in December. Over nearly four years, a consortium of public academic and research institutions, NGOs and social enterprises, supported by the Government of Norway, has explored what drives deforestation and forest degradation. The programme trialled four interventions: to expand conservation agriculture, to make logging more sustainable, to harvest and use biomass energy more efficiently, and to promote sustainable production of an important non-timber product. We now know what works.
Em Moçambique há um forte apoio à agricultura sustentável: métodos como sistemas agroflorestais e agricultura de conservação são promovidos cada vez mais pelo Ministério da Agricultura, a sociedade civil, organizações de camponeses e agências de desenvolvimento. Resultados de investigações sugerem que essas práticas aumentam a produtividade, são mais resilientes e economicamente acessíveis. Apesar disso, a adoção pelos pequenos produtores permanece baixa.
The loss of woodland in Mozambique is more than an environmental issue. Choices about land use — whether made locally, provincially or nationally — affect the availability of water, firewood, fertile land and other ‘ecosystem services’ delivered by woodlands. When these services underpin food security and routes out of poverty, what happens to woodlands becomes as much about people.
Uncertainties in the international carbon market make it imperative the UN’s REDD+ framework engages a wider spectrum of the private sector than just international companies and investors. Countries with REDD+ programmes should work with their domestic private sector to provide the missing momentum. Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises are crucial, as these usually dominate in forest- and agriculture-based economies.
Supporting the agriculture sector
The GoE with technical support from the Land Investment for Transformation (LIFT) programme is issuing Second Level Land Certificates (SLLC) to increase the land tenure security of farmers. As a result, farmers are more willing to invest in their land in a productive and sustainable way. However, to allow for increased productive investment, farmers must have access to improved agri-inputs and technologies that are climate smart: this is currently a challenge in most rural areas.