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Livestock and poultry-keeping are crucial to the farming and livelihood systems of Ghana. In May 2015, outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) threatened these systems and made it essential that measures be put in place to forestall losses caused by the disease in the affected areas and elsewhere. The project was designed to control the disease in Ghana and, above all, to prevent its spread to non-affected regions of the country and to neighbouring countries, by means of an immediate response. Find more Project Highlights here.

Sustainable integrated food energy systems can significantly help to address the huge increase in demands for food, energy and water in the coming years. Therefore, there is need for better information and capacities on how to promote integrated food energy system (IFES) to inform decision-makers and secure policy support to that effect. The project aimed to assess the sustainability and replicability of integrated food-energy systems (IFES, particularly for countries such as Ghana and Mozambique, which face the challenge of producing enough food and energy in a non-competitive way. Find more Project Highlights here.

El Niño, which swept the Philippines from 2015 to 2016, had a significant impact on agricultural production and food security. The project aimed to restore agriculture-based livelihoods of drought-affected farmers in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) and the Region XII, where a state of calamity was declared in four provinces. The project provided relevant agricultural inputs to the most affected and most vulnerable farm households and technical assistance through capacity building  of the relevant institutions, extension workers and farmers in building resilience to shocks, effective drought management and more robust monitoring and forecasting systems. Find more Project Highlights here.

In March 2017 the Working Group on Nutrition-Sensitive Value Chains of the Rome-based Agencies (FAO, IFAD, WFP and Bioversity International) launched the online consultation How can value chains be shaped to improve nutrition? The consultation was held on the FAO Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum) from 27 March to 19 April 2017. The aim of this initiative was to engage stakeholders in identifying challenges and opportunities related to nutrition sensitive value chain (NSVC) development. Participants discussed their experiences relating to past or ongoing NSVC experiences on the ground, and were also invited to comment on the discussion paper “Inclusive value chains for sustainable [...]

This study report, developed in collaboration with the Bright Futures of Burkina Faso, is based on the case study in Burkina Faso. It, through a survey of 183 women and 6 men including 36 leaders of shea groups, provides quantitative analysis on the economic resilience derived from shea nuts in terms of income, assets and savings; on the social indicators of wellbeing, education, health and living standards; and on the political implications, especially with regard to women’s decision making at home and at work, participation in the shea value chain and personal aspirations.

This paper, developed in collaboration with Professor Chen Xie of National Forestry Economics Research and Development Centre of China, is based on the literature review in China. The review focuses on the main forestry policies and social protection policies and their linkages, along with analysis of monitoring results from China’s major forestry programmes. It summarizes experiences and challenges in social protection in relation to forestry.  

This study provides a rationale for building linkages between social protection and sustainable forestry in developing countries through: the development of a conceptual framework for understanding the two-way relationship between social protection instruments and forestry policies; a review of evidence of the role of forestry policies in reducing vulnerabilities and fostering livelihoods among forest-dependent people; a review of the evidence of the impact of social protection instruments on th e resilience of forest-dependent people and on the promotion of sustainable forest management; and a discussion of ways of developing linkages between social protection and forestry policies.

This study provides a rationale for building linkages between social protection and sustainable forestry in developing countries through: the development of a conceptual framework for understanding the two-way relationship between social protection instruments and forestry policies; a review of evidence of the role of forestry policies in reducing vulnerabilities and fostering livelihoods among forest-dependent people; a review of the evidence of the impact of social protection instruments on th e resilience of forest-dependent people and on the promotion of sustainable forest management; and a discussion of ways of developing linkages between social protection and forestry policies.

This study reviewed the achievements, and also the shortcomings, of 12 watershed management projects technically supported by FAO over the past decade, with a view to learning from experience. Unlike sectoral development approaches, watershed management involves examining the interactions among various natural processes and land uses and managing land, water and the wider ecosystem of the watershed in an integrated way. Watershed management is best carried out as a stepwise multistakeholder process. The review identified a sequence of steps that watershed management projects or programmes should ideally follow. The approach has demonstrated its effectiveness for responding to global challenges of [...]

This paper, now also available in Chinese, explores the intra-industry trade in ethanol between the United States and Brazil, highlighting the lack of policy alignment and suggesting a “book and claim” system to cater to differing national objectives. See here all FAO Agricultural Development Economics Working Papers.