Special Fund for Emergency and Rehabilitation Activities (SFERA)

What is SFERA? The Special Fund for Emergency and Rehabilitation Activities (SFERA) is a flexible funding mechanism that enables FAO to rapidly respond to humanitarian crisis. Established in 2004, SFERA provides FAO with the financial means and flexibility to react promptly to emergency situations, reducing the time between funding decision and action on the ground.

Why invest in SFERA?

SFERA has the following benefits:

It enables rapid and effective emergency agricultural assistance thanks to the quick release of funds within days after a disaster, even before official resource partner agreements are finalized.
Through rapid agricultural input delivery, it allows crisis-affected populations to restore food production and stabilize livelihoods.
A dedicated window for Anticipatory action enables FAO to act ahead of forecast shocks and mitigate their potential impacts
It provides strategic programme support to formulate resilience building response.
By reducing time and transaction costs for all stakeholders, it increases cost-effectiveness.

Most of the poor and hungry depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. These livelihoods are most affected by conflict and protracted crises, climate change and related natural hazards, transboundary animal and plant pests and diseases and socioeconomic shocks, making smallholder farmers, fishers and herders more vulnerable to shocks.

During a crisis, many productive assets such as seeds, livestock and fishing gear are lost. FAO’s first priority is to rapidly assist affected farming families to re-establish their food production capacity and rebuild their lives and livelihoods as quickly as possible while strengthening their resilience to future shocks.

When effective agriculture-based response is delayed, communities suffer a domino effect of further losses that plunge them deeper into poverty and make them dependant on external aid.

Working capital

The working capital component allows to advance funds for field operations when there is a donor’s commitment to fund a project and before funds are actually released. It reduces the reaction time to emergencies by enabling FAO to initiate activities and purchase the most critical assets before funding from resource partners is received. By enabling a rapid response, this component helps to mitigate the impact of threats and emergencies.

Revolving fund

The revolving fund component supports the efforts of FAO’s emergency country teams to identify the most critical needs of affected populations, strengthen response capacity, and develop and coordinate technically sound response programmes. For example, it provides the possibility to deploy staff and organize needs assessments. Through the Level 3 emergency preparedness and response window, FAO can prepare for and respond to the extraordinary challenges facing the agriculture sector during a Level 3 emergency.

Programme

The programme component facilitates faster and more programmatic assistance that can be tailored to evolving needs on the ground. SFERA provides the flexibility to adjust activities and support them according to their greatest need.

The programme component has three windows:

Agricultural Inputs Response Capacity (AIRC) window channels funds from resource partners towards the immediate procurement and delivery of time-critical agricultural inputs;

Anticipatory Action (AA) window enables FAO to act early once an impending threat has been identified, to reduce, mitigate or avoid losses of livelihoods before the disaster hits.

Large-scale Programme window supports big emergency programmes (e.g. highly pathogenic avian influenza, El Niño, desert locust, COVID-19 pandemic, etc.). Funds from resource partners are flexibly allocated according to evolving needs and priorities on the ground;

How to contribute?

Resource partners can provide an unearmarked contribution to SFERA or they can direct their funds towards a specific component or window.
Another way to contribute to SFERA is by authorizing the transfer of interests or unspent balances from closed projects to SFERA.

FAO will then allocate the funds to specific countries and activities on the basis of the needs of the crisis-affected populations. Through SFERA annual reports, resource partners receive information on the activities and results achieved, as well as project highlights and stories as reported below.

FAO seeks to further expand its partnership with resource partners through SFERA as an effective means to respond rapidly to shocks, maximize the impact on beneficiaries and increase the cost-effectiveness of preparedness, anticipatory action and emergency response, thereby reducing the need for costly external assistance in the longer term.