Promoting climate-resilient agricultural cooperatives for rural small-holder farmers 

Sixty per cent of the world’s poor live in sub-Saharan Africa and are overwhelmingly concentrated in the rural agricultural sector. Because their livelihoods are inextricably linked to natural resources, environmental hazards and climate stresses disproportionally expose them to greater risks of deprivation, asset depletion, indebtedness, and further poverty. This project aims at supporting the design and implementation of legislation, policies or other measures, that promote the growth of climate resilient agricultural cooperatives in rural communities and the uptake of Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) practices.  Agricultural cooperatives can play an important role in building resilience against disruptive climate-induced weather events, pooling risks, and teaching ecologically friendly and safe agricultural techniques that can increase crop yields and advance conservation and carbon sequestration, as well as the use of bioenergy to reduce emission of polluting gases. Increasing women’s participation in cooperatives holds significant potential to foster women’s empowerment, participation and access to resources.  Women’s and men’s abilities to respond, adapt and recover from climate shocks differ, as do their CSA needs and priorities. This project will include gender-responsive CSA approaches, as the latter have the potential to encourage gender equality and transformation for climate resilience. Indeed, when given adequate information, training and resources, women have been found to be as likely or even more likely than men to implement CSA practices. When women are empowered to some degree in their households, they are more likely to adopt CSA practices. CSA in turn can contribute to gender equality by addressing the following gender-equal dimensions: (i) involvement in decision-making; (ii) access to resources and agroclimatic information; (iii) reduced workload/drudgery; and (iv) collective action for agency. Pathways to gender-responsive CSA development that this project will take include supporting women farmers to form agricultural cooperatives (to strengthen their capacity to participate in and move upward in sustainable value chains) and building women’s capacity in CSA practices and technologies.