Time for Results!!

It is almost time to wrap up the research, gather the conclusions and discuss them.

Over the past 10 weeks, my research goal was to analyse the IFAD projects for their Nutrition mainstreaming approaches coupled with gender aspects. The projects selected were approved between 2010-2015 and categorised as Nutrition sensitive.

Source: IFAD Image Bank

I am now in the process of analysing the Supervisory reports of the projects to examine the approaches that IFAD has been using to Mainstreaming the theme of Nutrition with a Gender dimension.

Source: IFAD Image Bank

 

 

Mainstreaming Climate, Gender, Nutrition and Youth.

Source: IFAD Image Bank

At the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), the General Assembly called on United Nations entities to “further enhance the mainstreaming of sustainable
development in their respective mandates, programmes, strategies and decision- making processes”. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 agenda such as such as SDG 13(climate change), SDG 5 (gender equality) and SDG 2 (nutrition) – all work towards realizing SDG 1 (poverty eradication) and SDG 10 (reducing inequality). Because in addressing the climate change mitigation and adaptation while improving the nutritional status of the people and establishing gender equality and women’s empowerment, we will be already be looking at a better resilient world.

Source: IFAD Image Bank

Thus the four thematic areas of climate change, gender, nutrition and youth have become an essential part of today’s development agenda.

Source: IFAD Image Bank

Read more about the IFAD’s work through the resources prepared for “Consultation on the Eleventh
Replenishment of IFAD’s Resources (IFAD11) on Looking ahead: IFAD in the
context of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” here.

Source: IFAD Image Bank

The Rural Solutions Portal

The world’s first web-based tool which designed to collect and share agricultural and rural development solutions implemented in the developing countries was launched by International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). The Rural Solutions Portal was introduced to the Government officials, development partners and diplomatic missions representatives in NewDelhi, India on 29 June 2017.

Source IFAD Image Bank

At the first reveal of the platform, the IFAD Director of Global Engagement and Multilateral Relations, Ashwani K Muthoo said: “Common challenges can be addressed by common solutions. The potential for smallholder farmers, development practitioners and institutions from Global South to learn from each other is immense, and the first step is sharing information about what works.”

Source: IFAD Image Bank

The portal is one of the key commitments by IFAD towards advancing the “Brasilia Declaration and Action Agenda” which was adopted during the International Conference on South-South Triangular Cooperation (SSTC) held in Brasilia in November 2017.

Source and read more at the IFAD Press Release.

The Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture Programme (ASAP) by IFAD

The Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture Programme (ASAP) was launched in 2012 by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). It is the largest global financing project which is committed to funding at least 8 million smallholder farmers to access information, tools and technologies and build their resilience to climate change.

ASAP aims to make the smallholder farmers climate resilient and orchestrate a massive Scaling-up of successful ”multiple-benefit” approaches. It expects to increase the smallholder farmers’ output while reducing and diversifying the climate-related risks.

ASAP is financed by IFAD and the governments of Belgium, Canada, Finland, the Republic of Korea, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the Region of Flanders. 40 ASAP supported projects were approved, committing to an amount of US$271.6 million towards the adaptation to climate change.

Introduction

Hello everyone!

I am Ramya, a student of MSc in Climate change, agriculture and food security at and supported by the NUI Galway, Ireland through the Max Arthur special merit scholarship. I am presently doing an internship at the IFAD HQ, Rome which will also be the Research project for my masters.

I completed my undergraduate degree at University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad, India, with a major in Food science and nutrition. As a part of the curriculum, I had to spend over 5 weeks in a rural setting, where I had incredible experiences which no classrooms could ever teach me. I realized that even though smallholder farmers manage over 80% of the world’s estimated 500 million small farms and provide over 80% of the food consumed in a large part of the developing world, contributing significantly to poverty reduction and food security, they are the most vulnerable population. Making them resilient is the need of the hour, where malnutrition is on the rise, despite the positive economic growth of certain populations. These experiences in my undergraduate study and exposure to the rural farming community triggered my present interest in making smallholder farmers better equipped to face the effects of climate change.  

Through this internship at the Environment, Climate, Gender and Social inclusion division of the IFAD, I hope I can understand the situation better and help build a resilient community, one household at a time.

 

Thank you for stopping by,

Ramya