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.
When good-quality administrative systems are in place and their information is regularly updated, they can reliably provide a full picture of key aspects of a country’s population or economy on a continuous basis. Data collected for administrative purposes can be a rich and cost-efficient source for the production of timely and high-quality official statistics, especially to address the urgent need for disaggregated data on SDG indicators to ensure no one is left behind in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. However, many countries still lack the infrastructure and technical and institutional arrangements needed for the efficient exchange and processing of administrative data and metadata for the production of official statistics. Moving in a direction of increased use of administrative data for statistics production will also make the statistical system more agile and resilient in times of crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic. The project supports 9 countries in addressing legal and technical challenges to administrative data sharing and processing administrative data. For each country one or two thematic areas are chosen. The results of the work will provide practical level experiences that also others can benefit from and will lead to a number of examples along the overall process of using administrative data for statistical purposes; from accessing data to processing them and publishing statistics based on them. Key stakeholders of this work will be the National Statistical Offices and the owners of the administrative data, along with the wider statistical system. Policy and decision makers will benefit from the results of the work.
This project aims to strengthen the capacity of Mauritius, Seychelles, Guinea-Bissau and Jamaica to formulate and implement integrated and coherent national planning and policy that promote social inclusion, macroeconomic stability, effective governance, protection of the environment and mobilizes stakeholders. Based on integrated planning methodologies and the principles of blue and green economy, the focus will be to support the development of economies that are resilient, diversified and have strengthened productive capacities. Environmental vulnerabilities and resilience building, including sustainable forest management, will receive special attention. The project will deliver a program of support that builds on DESA’s existing capacity development activities in integrated recovery planning, economic and environmental modelling, governance and institutional arrangements for policymaking, coordination and implementation, forests and climate financing and SIDS specific support. It will include analysis, training, advice, and stakeholder involvement activities to strengthen national capacities and processes for planning, including establishment of appropriate governance arrangements for formulation and implementation of integrated national development planning and responses to crises, such as those posed by the war in Ukraine and the COVID pandemic. Project impact would be evidenced by the incorporation and use of DESA tools, methods and approaches into national development plans, pandemic recovery strategies and other policies and strategies for the achievement of the SDGs.