Rami Abu Salman
Lead Environment and Climate Specialist
Environment and Climate Division
|
Updates on International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) IFAD’s operations are based on climate smart and biodiversity-friendly rural development approaches that integrate sustainable agriculture, land management and poverty alleviation.
Agriculture’s potential to do environmental good is still too often ignored. There are approaches that reduce waste and make more efficient use of production inputs.
Sustainable agriculture is an entry point for enhancing ecosystem services and achieving multiple benefits for the rural poor: poverty reduction, food security, climate resilience, environmental sustainability and biodiversity conservation.
IFAD is a GEF agency. Blending of GEF initiatives with IFAD interventions has helped IFAD to prioritize biodiversity issues within project design and mainstream rural sustainable development and integrated land management within its lending portfolio.
IFAD has an Environment and Climate Division which supports regional programmes in mainstreaming biodiversity conservation through programme design and implementation. In addition to that, IFAD has developed: The IFAD Climate Change Strategy; IFAD Natural Resource Management Policy; and has recently operationalised the Social, Environmental and Climate Assessment Procedures (SECAP) where biodiversity conservation is a main safeguard to be accounted for in the IFAD programme of loans and grants.
Biodiversity-related funding policies and programmes IFAD biodiversity interventions through loans and grants: By focusing its development work on farmers’ associations, smallholders and other organisations maintained by poor people, IFAD has been supporting partnerships at the grass-roots community level. These partnerships are essential for translating local efforts into global environmental benefits, seizing new opportunities for accessing innovative financing mechanisms in support of the rural poor and ensuring agriculture sustainability.
IFAD has a long tradition of collaboration with CGIAR centres and a wide spectrum of other partners to increase food productivity in developing countries while at the same time ensure conservation of natural assets. Examples of these interventions include: the application of research-based technologies; promotion of payments for ecosystem services; promoting access to markets for green products; identifying, protecting and promoting endangered traditional crops; supporting communities for the development of seed banks; and enhancing policy processes for biodiversity conservation. IFAD is strongly committed to contribute to the implementation of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets.
|
