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Empowerment is the “expansion of people’s ability to make strategic life choices” (Kabeer, 1999). According to the UN, women’s empowerment has five components: women’s sense of self-worth; their right to have and to determine choices; their right to have access to opportunities and resources; their right to have the power to control their own lives, both within and outside the home; and their ability to influence the direction of social change to create a more just social and economic order, nationally and internationally (FAO, 2017). The process of empowerment rests on enabling social conditions including social norms and legislative action [...]

Esta publicación presenta diez experiencias de colaboración intercultural escalables que demuestran la importancia, eficiencia y efectividad de trabajar de la mano de hombres, mujeres y jóvenes de pueblos indígenas y afrodescendientes de América Latina y el Caribe en la búsqueda de soluciones prácticas desarrolladas a partir de la sinergia entre el conocimiento ancestral y la innovación científica y tecnológica.Los pueblos indígenas y afrodescendientes son dos de los grupos rurales con mayor potencial para contribuir a la mitigación del cambio climático en la región. Ambos grupos están altamente expuestos a los desastres naturales y los efectos del clima en la agricultura [...]

The document summarizes the report that, based on a review of more than 250 studies, demonstrates the importance and urgency of climate action to protect the forests of the indigenous and tribal territories of Latin America as well as the indigenous and tribal peoples who protect them. These territories contain about a third of the continent's forests. That's 14% of the carbon stored in tropical forests around the world; These territories are also home to an enormous diversity of wild fauna and flora and play a key role in stabilizing the local and regional climate.Based on an analysis of the [...]

This report presents findings from a study of the economic and food security impacts of the FAO project "Productive safety nets as a tool to reinforce the resilience in the Sahel" (hereinafter referred to as the project/programme Cash+) that took place from April 2015 to February 2017. The project aimed to strengthen the resilience of households vulnerable to shocks and heavily affected by food insecurity and was carried out in two countries: Mali and Mauritania. Unconditional in-cash and in-kind transfers were distributed to the most vulnerable households, which also benefited from other training and technical activities which aimed to strengthen [...]

This policy brief is one in a series led by Chulalongkorn University with support from the Office of the Higher Education Commission, Ministry of Education, Thailand, in partnership with FAO. The series was initiated to support the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Work Plan on Education, 2016–2020 implementation while Thailand was Chair of ASEAN in 2019 under the theme: “Advancing Partnership for Sustainability.” The Briefs offer critical interdisciplinary perspectives on agri-food systems from social and sustainability sciences. They are fully aligned with the regional initiative on Food System Transformation and are meant to support the work engaged with ASEAN.This [...]

An impact evaluation of Nicaragua’s Land Administration Programme (PRODEP) finds that the programme ensured gender equality in the access to land titles, with women landholders more likely to obtain titles than men landholders. The programme also significantly increased beneficiaries’ perception of high tenure security, and title-holders were more likely to report that their land had increased its value. However, the lack of impacts in other household-level investments provides policy insights on the need of complementarity support measures for landowners.

This policy brief summarizes the findings of surveys among financial and insurance providers, fishers and fisherfolk organizations in the Philippines in 2021. It explains why financial services are important for small-scale fishers (SSF) and provides recommendations for improving their access to finance and insurance. SSF make an important contribution to food security and the rural economy.The average income of most SSF is below the poverty line of USD 2 500/year. For economic growth and sustainable fishing operations SSF need access to financial and insurance services. Less than 50 percent of the SSF have access to financial services. Only 30 percent [...]

This document is a special update of the recent FAO analysis, “Climate finance in the agriculture and land use sector – global and regional trends between 2000 and 2018” and includes newly released data for 2019. Climate finance is a fundamental element of the global development agenda and has been accelerating in the past years. The recent FAO analysis identified that between 2000 and 2018 the share of global climate finance in the agriculture and land use sector decreased, passing from an average of 45 percent of the total flows at the beginning of the millennium, to 24 percent in [...]

Report on how the first wave of COVID-19 impacted on smallholder farmers in northern Shan State in Myanmar. The study examines the interactions of reduced border trade, remittances and contracted labour markets on household food security, nutrition and land tenure. In turn, tenure insecurity in rural areas may deepen the effects of COVID-19, as most rural people struggle to sustain their livelihoods through access to land and other natural resources. This is relevant as many ethnic groups in northern Shan State continue to manage their land through customary tenure systems that are not fully recognized by state authorities.See the full [...]

Seasonal migration has been greatly affected by COVID-19 mobility restrictions. More specifically, migrant workers engaged in seasonal employment have suffered an immense blow as a result of the enforcement of lockdown measures, which further increased the uncertainty of their livelihoods and of the welfare and economic security of their households in their countries of origin. This brief has been prepared as part of the work on addressing migration-related issues across the region of Europe and Central Asia, including the impact of COVID-19 on seasonal migration. The brief is reviewing the situation in the countries of the region, where seasonal migration [...]