3) Towards an inclusive and equitable growth
Improving the productivity and sustainability of small-scale family farmers alone will not be sufficient to achieve the UNDFF milestones or SDG goals in the NENA region. The engagement of adolescents and youth, women and individuals in vulnerable situations such as migrants, will be critical to long term, inclusive and equitable growth.
Based on your experience, what are effective strategies, instruments or mechanisms to ensure adequate access to services, resources and social protection among marginalized or vulnerable groups, including in humanitarian contexts?
Despite the informality of the agriculture sector, any support for smallholder family farming can and should go hand in hand with the promotion of the Decent work Agenda. Family farmers are engaged in arduous and sometimes hazardous work to cut costs and compensate for the farm’s low productivity to an extent of involving children too, based on your experience please give three priority actions to enable decent employment for rural smallholders, youth and women and to eliminate child labour in family farming.
Response :
Setting up of textile industry components like woolen clothes can help in providing decent employment to women for rural communities. The women have to weave the clothes from the raw material which is sent to them from the supplier. The strategy is to provide basic employment by utilizing the man power at a nominal cost.
Generally, International bodies help the flood victims across the world by providing financial aid directly. Instead, it can provide material supplies like garments which are woven by the women in these rural areas. Those international bodies can pay for the services and the finished product is sent to the victims across different countries during natural calamaties.
A similar approach can be made when we see an excess production of food in few countries where storage is not possible. For instance, rice production in India sometimes was found to be very high and as a result a lot of food is wasted. If that rice is transported to NENA countries and converted into other products like Puffed rice etc, the product can be either consumed in the countries to meet the hunger. Additionally, pickle/ketchup/Jam manufacturing units can be set up by transporting food that is excess in any nearby country.
4) Enabling environment for the implementation of UNDFF
Building an enabling environment for the implementation of UNDFF regional action plan means that there are adequate resources and that governance and institutional arrangements are effective and inclusive.
How do you define roles of Governments, development agencies, farmers’ organizations, civil society and private sector in implementing the UNDFF in the region?
Response:
Governments and Development agencies
Governments and development agencies should play a crucial role in data collection because all the objectives and targets that are to be achieved are data driven. The governments should either deploy more workforce or take the help of organizations and universities to get the data that is crucial for the execution of the tasks.
Civil Society
Civil society should focus on solutions which can help the farmers indirectly by their systematic contribution. For instance, a small initiative in the waste management sector by the civil society in the urban and rural areas can provide the necessary compost and fertilizer to the farming communities at a cheaper and affordable rates. The civil society should focus on gathering resources, gaining expertise and developing a product and transport the product the local farming communities where the fertilizer is in demand. The farming community may help the residents by providing food products at a lower rate. However this initiative needs guidance and support from experts across the world.
Private sector
Private sector can help in identifying and scaling up small scale technologies which are needed for achieving the objectives. Setting up of small scale industries can be easily achieved with marginal profits with the intervention of the private sector. For instance, few firms have developed a battery driven tractor for ploughing fields which is much economical than the conventional diesel vehicle. Such technologies can be transferred to these countries to enable the farmers and inturn contribute to the upliftment of various sectors in NENA countries.
5) Partnerships
Partnerships associated with sustainable development initiatives can create synergies to address interconnected challenges that need to be addressed. With the aim to implement the UNDFF action plan in its seven pillars in the NENA region,
How can innovative partnerships be built and established? And how/what existing initiatives would you propose to replicate or scale up?
Scaling up of initiatives that were already taken up and that are to be taken up needs mentoring from the trained experts all over the world. For that we have to develop few of these partnerships.
Response :
Partnership with Software agencies for Providing Digital connectivity
A partnership with leading software agencies is the need of the hour for collecting data and for analysis of the outputs. We may need to use few softwares where we can map the areas and systematically analyze the data to track the progress of our objectives. The necessary tools have to be identified and the partnership with relevant agencies should be established as early as possible.
Partnership with Local universities
Local universities should identify potential “change makers” who can train the local people on various technologies which can improve agriculture. These change makers are to be trained by training agencies through online mode. The training agencies must be requested to train them for this cause. Further the local universities can help in identifying key challenges and help in local logistic support for execution of the tasks
Partnership with Training agencies and Individual Researchers for capacity building
Many training agencies across the world charge for providing the training. A small initiative of training a couple of participants for free or at a discounted cost as a part of collaboration can help in capacity building in the NENA countries in the long run. Further, there might be individual researchers in various educational and research institutions across the world who can contribute willingly to provide the necessary training. Their online training and support can help the change makers to gain the necessary expertise. These change makers under the mentorship of the experts can further help in scaling up of the training facilities in the respective countries.
Partnership with Airline travel partners
Few Air line travel agencies has emerging as a new gateway to Africa in the recent years. This connectivity option can help NENA countries in many ways. Firstly, many transit passengers use different Airlines across key cities in africa. A fund raising center or an Information desk in airports where the transit passengers can contribute funds or any other resources or help in any form will help in achieving goals at a faster rate. This center can not only highlight the tasks that are being carried out but also will help in reaching more experts in various fields who can contribute for this cause.
Dr. Sumanth Chinthala