General

Inspired by OCH and aligned to Africa framework call to enhance local voice and agency, this project will contribute to two outcomes of the Kenya Resilience programme; Outcome 3; Degraded landscapes restored and protected through sustainable land management and providing a stream of ecosystems services Outcome 5: Policy and decision makers are actively implementing plans, budget and initiatives that support environment and food security, water related issues, and livelihoods of women and youth. Phased in annual plans for three years, Jesuit Hakimani through this project is seeking to enhance Voice and Agency of local community in policy dialogue that will lead to understanding impacts of climate change to marginalised and indigenous communities. Traditional ecological knowledge, has potential to play a central role in both indigenous and non-indigenous climate change initiatives also called climate change local adaptation mechanisms. The detection of environmental changes, the development of strategies to adapt to these changes, and the implementation of sustainable land-management principles are all important climate action items that can be informed by traditional ecological knowledge. Intention is to include traditional ecological knowledge as a voice of the local community into climate research, ecological education, resource planning and decision-making processes that should eventually be incorporated, as a local voice & local content into the climate change policy, climate action plans and assessments, and more important for resilience improve adaptation efforts at County, National, and Regional, levels. The two objectives are; 1. Local voices and local content developed to inform training and evidence based advocacy activities 2. Inclusion of indigenous knowledge and information in local, national and regional policy dialogue and advocacy engagements

General

The proposed operation is the first phase of the Shire Valley Transformation Program (SVTP-I) in Malawi. SVTP is a program of three sequential but partially overlapping phases (with different financiers entering at different times and in parallel financing arrangements). The program is to provide access to reliable gravity fed irrigation and drainage services, secure land tenure for smallholder farmers and strengthened management of wetlands and protected areas. SVTP-I will provide the necessary infrastructure and enabling environment to scale up the deployment of agricultural technologies under SVTP-II in line with the Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) framework to increase agricultural productivity and value addition. SVTP-II shifts investment focus to agricultural investment, private sector and value chain support, as well as the investments in bulk infrastructure for the SVIP-II area. Finally, SVTP-III is the massive scale up phase of investments to the SVIP-II area. SVTP-I has a time frame of seven years from 2018 to 2025 and total cost net of taxes and duties, is UA 155.93 million. The project has four main components, namely: (i) Irrigation Service and Infrastructure Provision; (ii) Land Tenure and Natural Resources Management Support; (iii) Agriculture development and Commercialization; and (iv) Project Management and Coordination.

Objectives

The SVTP-1 objective is to contribute to poverty reduction through increased value addition and provision of infrastructure for increased agricultural productivity and climate adaptation.

Target Groups

The direct beneficiaries of the project are approximately 56,000 families of smallholder farmers. The project will focus on the participation of women and female-headed households (about 40-60% of the total number of beneficiaries targeted by government policy) as well as young people, but will strive to include as many women as possible.

Objectives

This project is in response to the critical humanitarian and protection needs in the Um Dukhum Locality in Central Darfur. It is linked to Project No: SUD-17/ER/110751 in OPS. It aims to strengthen the resilience and self-reliance of returnees and host community members and facilitate durable solutions for displaced populations. Specifically, the project seeks to improve the enabling environment for peaceful coexistence in the local communities by strengthening community organizations and collective institutional capacities, ensuring social cohesion and reduction of tensions. It will establish community centres and strengthen community based conflict resolution mechanisms as well as strengthening the role of national rule of law and justice institutions to boost safety, peace and security at the local level. As youth have been identified to be a particular risk and potential, and often excluded from peace building and social cohesion processes, more innovation and creativity is needed to ensure that these groups are engaged. The project will therefore benefit from the recently launched UNDP Innovation Lab which will support in bringing new, locally sourced solutions to the targeted communities. The project is targeting 5,070 direct beneficiaries from three communities (Garaaya, Magan and Beltibei) in the Umdukhun locality in Central Darfur State. According to recent inter-agency assessment conducted in the Locality, Um Dukhum has witnessed one of the highest numbers of returnees in Sudan since 2013 and reaching its peak in 2016, with about 80,000 returnees reported so far. The majority of people have returned from Chad as well as from within the country. The locality has experienced some of the worst tribal clashes over land rights and grazing areas since 2013 with continued spiral triggers coupled with the lack of and or weak rule of law an just institutions. The continued influx of returnees and other displaced people into these localities is gradually stretching the carrying capacity of the area resulting in mounting tensions that are likely to re-ignite conflicts if not intervened. For this reason, the need to intervene in these communities has become very critical.

General

The US$2.5 trillion annual funding gap in meeting the SDGs by 20301, which includes a US$300–350 billion annual shortfall in investment needed to transform food and land use systems2 and a US$598–US$824 billion shortfall in investment in biodiversity3, tells us that we are failing to help agrifood systems (AFS), especially those in LMICs, thrive in a world threatened by growing global health, environmental, and planetary crises. The 2021 UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) and COP26 called for urgent action if we are to close on these global climate and SDG targets by 2030.

The Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration commits 137 countries — including the seven selected AgriLAC Resilient countries — to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030, while delivering sustainable development and inclusive rural transformation. The UNFSS received 231 commitments globally to, inter alia, support development of AFS that, despite shocks and stressors such as conflict, climate change, and natural disasters, will succeed in delivering food security, nutrition, and equitable livelihoods for all.

To deliver on these commitments, LMICs need assistance to legislate net-zero targets, design feasible transformation pathways for the sectors involved (especially livestock) and realign policy and economic incentives to steer AFS in the right direction. The AgriLAC Resiliente Initiative will do precisely that in seven of the most climate-vulnerable and conflict-prone countries of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).

Opportunities and challenges in LAC are substantial. LAC biodiversity and forests play key roles in global environmental sustainability, ranking among the top 6 of the 10 ten most- biodiverse countries in the world — featuring 23% global forest coverage, 36% CO2eq stock kept in forests, 33% total volume of renewable water resources. However, LAC agriculture — driven by desperation, poverty, inefficiency, and inequality — uses 33% of LAC land area, nearly 75% of its freshwater resources, and generates almost 50% of its greenhouse gas emissions (GHGEs)— 70% of which from livestock.

The scale of the problem is alarming. Despite consistent food production surpluses and extensive food export, 83 million people in LAC are poor and 53 million are hungry (FAO & CEPAL, 2020). Fifty-one million rural people and US$28 billion in crop and livestock production are exposed to climate hazards, particularly drought and climate variability (floods, hurricanes). In Central America, poverty, unemployment (~30 million4) and conflict drive incessant out-migration (primarily rural out-migration), burdening the resources of neighboring HICs, primarily the United States. Smallholder farmers’ livelihoods depend on an ever-narrowing portfolio of crops: maize, beans, rice, and coffee; female farmers who account for at least half of all LAC food producers are frequently not recognized as farmers or decision-makers. Higher-up the chain, LAC reliance on a resource-intensive agriculture model pushes conventional livestock production to encroach on forests and arable land, exacerbating GHGEs.

AgriLAC Resiliente will harness decades of robust CGIAR and broader AR4D ecosystem research in LAC —including CCAFS, FTA, and WLE— offering an unprecedented opportunity to ensure this expertise, research evidence base and results —hereto dispersed across various CGIAR Centers and AR4D partnerships— are united to address these critical challenges.

By 2030, AgriLAC Resiliente will have helped seven LAC countries to design and deploy low-emission, resource-efficient pathways that (1) support the AFS transitions required to set LAC on track to meet 2030 UNFSS, SDG, and COP26 targets, and (2) increase the climate resilience of especially poor, rural farming communities to foster employment opportunities, keep youth in their own communities and reduce out-migration at its source. For this ambitious agenda we have designed a stepwise approach over two–three cycles (2022–2024, 2025–2030); an initial phase of understanding, testing, piloting, and early adoption in four central LAC countries (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua), later expanded to include Colombia, Peru, and Mexico (2022–2024), will be followed by broader out- and upscaling, mainstreaming, and policy and incentive adaptation to cover more challenging (but also more potentially impact-generating) countries such as Brazil (2025–2030).