81877 Statement by Dr. Kanayo Nwanze President International Fund for Agricultural Development 88th Development Committee Meeting October 12, 2013 Washington, DC The end of extreme poverty is within our grasp, and can be achieved in our lifetimes. But as the international development community works together towards a world free from poverty – and the hunger, social exclusion and lack of hope that so often attend it – there is an opportunity to do even more, creating the conditions for people to move from extreme poverty to sustained prosperity, instead of following the more common road from extreme poverty to less-extreme poverty. There has already been encouraging progress on the poverty reduction front. The first Millennium Development Goal target, of reducing by half the proportion of people living in extreme poverty, has already been met. Progress, however, has been unevenly distributed, and while the goal has been achieved in South-Eastern Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean and Northern Africa, it remains unfulfilled in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia. Moreover, today there are still 1.2 billion people living in extreme poverty, and 842 million suffering from chronic hunger. Reaching these people and helping them achieve sustained prosperity will require addressing the cross- cutting issues that impact the development agenda, particularly gender inequality, climate change, food insecurity and malnutrition. These are all areas where the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has expertise through its day-to-day operations. Poverty is predominantly a rural issue IFAD is unique in being both an International Financial Institution and a specialized agency of the United Nations, dedicated to eliminating rural poverty and hunger. The projects and programmes we support have helped more than 400 million poor rural people to grow and sell more food, increase their incomes, strengthen their food security and improve their livelihoods. Today, IFAD supports 253 projects in 96 countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America, worth more than $12 billion. To ensure that those who have already emerged from poverty are able to remain out of poverty, we must focus our efforts in rural areas, and on smallholder farming. Today, despite rapid global urbanization, poverty remains deeply and stubbornly entrenched in rural areas. IFAD’s core business has always been to enable poor rural people to overcome poverty and hunger. As a result, our work is closely aligned with the first MDG. It contributes indirectly towards most of the other MDGs as well, because poverty and hunger are at the root of so many of the world’s problems. Gender equality is a cross-cutting issue IFAD has long recognized that there will be no substantial progress in poverty reduction and food security unless there are greater efforts to promote gender equality and empower women. Today, women account for around half of participants in IFAD-supported projects. Given the critical role women play in community welfare, IFAD’s board last year approved a Policy on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment to mainstream gender initiatives at IFAD. The policy’s objectives are to improve economic empowerment, representation and decision-making, and workload balance of women. IFAD vigorously supports women in community-development projects; women make up around 75 per cent of the people trained in business and community management in IFAD-supported projects, and almost 70 per cent of the users of rural financial services. IFAD works to strengthen existing livelihoods, such as in Cambodia where women are receiving technical training to raise chickens and pigs, and to produce vegetables. IFAD-supported projects also help women develop new areas of expertise and livelihoods, such as in Yemen, where young women are training as veterinary professionals, breaking with tradition in a male-dominated area. And IFAD promotes economic empowerment by increasing women’s control over assets such as land. In Ethiopia, for example, a project has helped more than 50 per cent of women-headed households obtain land certificates. The impact of climate change on women Climate change has increased the rate of migration of male populations away from rural areas, leaving women with greater responsibilities, both in farming activities and within the community, which significantly increases their workload. In addition, the type of work traditionally done by women – such as gathering firewood – has become even more time consuming in this era of climate change. IFAD- supported projects help rural women and men become more resilient to the varied effects of climate change, and to change their behavior for the benefit of the planet and themselves. In China, Eritrea, Kenya, Nigeria and Rwanda, IFAD is supporting biogas systems that convert waste into energy. The methane produced by manure is 22 times more damaging than carbon dioxide, but it is less harmful when it is burned, and provides a source of renewable and affordable energy. The use of clean- burning gas instead of wood for cooking reduces the health damage caused by smoke inhalation, while simultaneously reducing pressure on forest resources. Women, who traditionally spend long hours collecting firewood, have time to generate income from the animals that generate dung for the digesters, but also produce meat, milk, wool and eggs. IFAD’s Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture Programme (ASAP) is a fully-integrated programme that channels climate finance directly to smallholder famers. It allows IFAD to scale-up proven climate change adaptation methods, such as mixed crop and livestock systems that integrate the use of drought- tolerant crops and manure – increasing agricultural productivity while diversifying risks across different products. And it allows IFAD to build new elements into its programming, such as early warning systems for pests and disease. For example, in Lesotho, IFAD is supporting a project that provides farmers with market price information and with timely weather forecasts so they can protect their livestock from extreme heat in summer and extreme cold in winter. This reduces the risk of livestock losses and strengthens rural value chains. 2 Gender equality and women’s empowerment has been a priority for ASAP from the start. ASAP- supported interventions have notably contributed to operationalizing the objectives of giving women an equal voice in decision-making and reducing workloads, in addition to addressing economic empowerment. Gender equality improves family nutrition As we consider how to reduce poverty and increase prosperity, we must consider how to improve nutrition. Poverty, hunger and malnutrition too often go hand-in-hand, perpetuating each other in a vicious circle. IFAD-supported projects allow farmers to diversify their production away from basic staple crops and towards vegetables, fruit, livestock and animal-based foods. Vegetables and fruit provide essential micronutrients such as vitamin A and iron, necessary for good health. Livestock products are an excellent source of high-quality protein and essential micronutrients such as vitamin B, iron and zinc. In addition, the higher-value products command higher prices than staple crops, allowing families to increase their incomes. And IFAD’s support of processing and storage facilities allows farmers to safely store what they don’t sell immediately after harvest, increasing food availability during the hungry season. IFAD has also been at the forefront of using chronic malnutrition (height-for-age or stunting) as an anchor indicator of impact. Chronic malnutrition is also used as a proxy indicator for achievements in the area of gender equality because of its strong correlation with women’s empowerment. Going forward, IFAD has included such impact indicators in its overall results framework. These include acute, chronic, and underweight malnutrition and the length of the hungry season. And we are also developing indicators of women’s empowerment. Empowering women is one of the most effective ways of reducing chronic child malnutrition. Women are the primary caregivers in rural households. A woman’s education, health, nutritional and decisions- making status also have a significant impact on the health and nutritional status of children. When women earn money, they are more likely than men to spend it on food for the family. At a time when the post-2015 global development agenda is being developed, we have an opportunity to put the measures in place that will allow us, once and for all, to eliminate the scourge of poverty and hunger and to create a world of prosperity and well-being. Doing so demands not just investment and determination, but a commitment to rural areas and smallholder agriculture, and to the female farmers of the developing world. 3