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This paper incorporates climate variables, including rainfall conditions and patterns, into an impact assessment of the Value Chain Development Project in the Maputo and Limpopo Corridors (PROSUL) in Mozambique. It focuses on activities targeting improved pasture management, supplemental feed sources and livestock value chain development. Results show weather and climate conditions significantly impact households’ adoption of project activities and livestock productivity outcomes. Project beneficiaries in drought-prone areas are more likely to provide supplemental feed in the dry season, though livestock birth rates are still lower in those areas.

This paper discusses which climate variables to collect, and from which sources, when incorporating them into an impact assessment. It finds that severe saline intrusion in Viet Name—caused by climate change and land and water use—had significant effects on crop choices and negative impacts on a range of production and livelihood outcomes.

Rural transformation is an integral component of economic development, which leads to reduction in poverty and improvement in women’s empowerment. Complete equality between men and women, however, cannot be reached without specific policy action (Duflo, 2012). The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have added renewed emphasis on women’s empowerment in the development discourse as 11 of the 17 SDGs require improvements in indicators related to gender dynamics, even though the SDG5 is the only one directly addressing gender inequality (Doss et al. 2018). Promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment in rural areas is one of the key objectives of IFAD. It comprises three dimensions: economic empowerment to enable both rural women and men to participate in and benefit from profitable economic activities (economic empowerment); equal voice of men and women to influence rural institutions and organizations, including decision making processes at the household, community, and local level (voice and decision-making); and a more equitable balance in workload and in sharing economic and social benefits between women and men (equitable workloads). Our paper contributes to the understanding of the impacts of IFAD investments on gender equity and women’s empowerment, focusing on a synthesis of existing evidence on the types of welfare-improving interventions. More specifically, we summarize findings from six impact assessments of IFAD supported projects that have used the integrated Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (i-WEAI) to estimate impacts on multiple dimensions of women’s empowerment.[1] Focusing on this methodology and using data disaggregated by sex, we present the results of the IAs of the six IFAD programs conducted in three different IFAD regions and focusing on a variety of activities and sectors, including agriculture value chains (Mali-PMR, Nigeria-VCDP, and Tanzania-MIVARF), household business enterprises (Ghana-REP III) and natural resources management (Kenya-UTaNRMP and Djibouti-PRAREV). Although all programs paid a particular attention to vulnerable groups and especially women, the evidence suggests large variations in their impacts on gender-related indicators. Overall, while many programs worked towards encouraging joint decision making on income generating activities, they sometimes fell short on improving actual female participation. Finally, female asset ownership is a dimension for which progress is still very much needed overall, as lack of impacts or poor performances were observed for most programs. Particular attention should be devoted to women land ownership, tenure, and property rights that have remained unimproved in all cases. This study also identifies guiding principles for project/program design and policymaking that improve women’s empowerment. [1]The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) (Alkire et al., 2013) and the project-level WEAI (pro-WEAI), the newest version of WEAI designed as a diagnostic and impact assessment tool for agricultural development projects (Malapit et al., 2019), measure inclusion and empowerment of both sexes in the agricultural sector. The integrated-WEAI (i-WEAI), is a novel approach to measure women’s empowerment that is intended to prevent duplication of survey questions (via minor modifications of pro-WEAI data collection methodology) and reduce overall survey time.

The objective of this systematic review (SR) is to identify, assess and synthesize evidence on the effectiveness of feedback, reminders, salience (communication), salience (experience design), and goal-setting interventions conducted in developing countries on environmental/climate and development outcomes. We conducted 12 meta-analyses. The most effective intervention type is feedback, particularly in relation to electricity and water consumption. We identified an overall pooled effect estimate of 0.26 (CI: 0.13 to 0.39). A similar pattern emerges for reminders, specifically on acquisition of knowledge, where we identify an overall pooled effect estimate of 0.87 (CI: 0.34 to 1.41). We find no significant effects on goal-setting interventions based on a limited number of meta-analyses. For salience (experience design) and salience (communication) interventions identified in this SR, the heterogeneity in interventions and outcomes does not allow for a meta-analysis and rigorous synthesis of effects. The SR aims to facilitate the use of evidence in informing policy and practice decisions within the environmental/climate and development fields, particularly in the GCF and IFAD

This systematic review evaluates the effectiveness of life skills training intervention programmes in empowering women in developing countries. Life skills training has emerged as a popular approach to empowerment, often as a part of a multicomponent intervention. Overall, the systematic review finds that life skills positively affect a range of self, social and economic empowerment outcomes. Small but significant positive changes were detected for a range of outcome areas including leadership, attitudes to gender issues, sexual and reproductive health and rights, employment and life skills themselves. There is some indication that multi-component approaches may be more effective. Life skills training can be called a promising approach with potential for supporting women's empowerment in climate and agricultural projects. Including life skills interventions within components of Green Climate Fund and International Fund for Agricultural Development project interventions can contribute to transforming women’s lives, livelihoods and societal roles.

This evidence gap map (EGM) presents a landscape of studies on the effectiveness of behavioural science interventions in non-Annex I settings, a group of mainly developing countries within the context of the Kyoto Protocol of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The EGM summarizes causal evidence from development and environmental interventions. Understanding what is effective in changing behaviour in these countries is important for both adaptation and mitigation purposes. Although the evidence base is thin, the EGM reveals that the most commonly evaluated interventions are reminders, feedback, micro-incentives, salience of communication, commitment devices, salience of experience design (how individuals interact with their physical or digital environment), goal setting, rules of thumb, social norms and social benchmarking. The impact evaluations are relatively skewed towards sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia and the Pacific. A limited number of impact evaluations have been conducted in Europe and Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. A majority of the studies included in the EGM emanate from the water, sanitation and hygiene sector, the financial sector, the energy and extractives sector and the agricultural sector

This evidence gap map (EGM) plots studies on the effectiveness of interventions for women’s empowerment in developing countries (defined here as the list of countries defined by the Kyoto Protocol as non-Annex I countries). The EGM contains 423 studies, of which 288 are impact evaluations, 105 are process evaluations and 38 are systematic reviews. Most evidence is from studies conducted in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia. There is a relatively large amount of evidence on economic interventions and capacity-building interventions, and both these categories in the map have a high number of impact evaluations and systematic reviews. There is a dearth of evidence on policy and institutional interventions. In terms of outcomes, political empowerment outcome categories are far less populated than other outcome categories. Women’s representation in political bodies, digital access and access to justice shows very little evidence.

Structural and rural transformation are intricately linked to food systems. Structural transformation captures a country’s level of dependence on agriculture, while rural transformation captures productivity in the agricultural sector. In particular, agri-food system and employment transitions influence structural and rural transformation and shape the spatial distribution of populations by influencing where people live, work and eat, all of which closely relate to food system transitions. Using country-level data from 85 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), this paper outlines a food systems index (FSI) and analyses the linkages between food systems and structural and rural transformation, as well as population distributions. It also selects a number of policy-relevant variables from World Development Indicators and uses machine learning methodology to shed light on patterns related to institutions, female empowerment, infrastructure, and health. The paper finds that countries in the lowest FSI group will see their youth populations more than double in the next 30 years, indicating that the food system investments of today will affect one third of global youth in the future. It also finds that structural transformation is a necessary but not sufficient condition for desirable food system outcomes. Rural transformation by itself without structural transformation is not enough either. For LMICs, broad development interventions are more important to progress food systems.

This paper outlines a methodological strategy for incorporating weather and long-term climate conditions into impact assessments, based on an IFAD-supported project that invested in grain storage in Chad. First, the paper explores a range of weather and climate variables from different sources to determine the best indicators of weather conditions and corresponding historical climate conditions. Next, the inclusion of climatic variables to match treatment and control households, and their impact on outcomes, is evaluated. During the crop season surveyed, rainfall and temperature patterns were favourable with few significant weather shocks. However, households in areas with lower rainfall and greater incidence of high temperatures had lower grain yields and dietary diversity.

Food systems must serve different societal, health, and environmental objectives. They therefore face numerous challenges. This paper highlights five fundamental paradigm shifts that are required to overcome trade-offs and build synergies between health and nutrition, inclusive livelihoods, environmental sustainability, and food system resilience. We focus on the challenges to raise policy ambitions, harmonize production and consumption goals, improve connectivity between these goals, strengthen food system responsiveness, and anchor inclusive and participatory governance of food systems. Taken together, these paradigm shifts shape a new narrative for food system transformation that will be capable of responding to current and future policy challenges.

Climate change is imposing a transformative process on agricultural and food systems, threatening the livelihoods of people dependent on them, including a large proportion of the world’s poor people. Moving to a process that contributes to improving rather than endangering livelihoods is the challenge that climate change adaptation and resilience-building efforts currently face. Transformative adaptation that addresses the interactions between food systems and climate change requires adequate, accessible, and appropriate financing. Expanding climate finance resources from the public sector and creating an incentivizing environment for private sector investments is needed to attain adequate levels of financing. Appropriate finance must be designed to address specific characteristics of adaptation investments, such as risk, delayed returns, high social values, and new and unproven activities. Using blended finance integrated with development finance can generate financing appropriate to the investment needs.

This paper applies a methodological framework for incorporating current period weather and long-term climate conditions into impact assessments. More specifically, the framework applies to non-experimental impact assessments that rely on ex post data collected from both households that were beneficiaries of the project (treated households) and those that did not benefit (control households). Here, the authors apply the methodological framework to an IFAD project that aimed to increase high quality coffee and the performance of coffee cooperatives in Rwanda as a case study. Results show that there is some evidence of biased treatment impacts when climatic variables are not included, but more importantly, show that coffee producers are highly vulnerable to weather shocks. To generate more climate-change relevant evidence more rapidly, there is ample opportunity to more fully exploit impact assessment datasets than is commonly done.

As stated in its Strategic Framework 2016-2025, the overarching goal for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is to invest in rural people to enable them to overcome poverty and achieve food security through remunerative, sustainable, and resilient livelihoods. IFAD pursues this goal through three closely interlinked and mutually reinforcing strategic objectives: (i) increasing rural people’s productive capacities; (ii) increasing rural people’s benefits from market participation; and (iii) strengthening the environmental sustainability and climate resilience of rural people’s economic activities. To hold itself accountable on progress made in achieving this goal and these three strategic objectives, IFAD has adopted a unique approach to reporting impact at the corporate level, building on rigorous project-level evaluations. This report provides the results of these efforts to assess the corporate impact of IFAD investments for the Tenth Replenishment of IFAD’s Resources (IFAD10) period of 2016-2018. Corporate impact is founded on the impact of individual IFAD-funded interventions. This report provides an overview of corporate impact estimates, which determine whether IFAD met its IFAD10 targets, as well as project-level results including lessons learned from the project-level analysis. The report includes the main results of the impact assessment of individual projects. Out of a total portfolio of 104 projects completed during the 2016-20181 replenishment period, 19 have been evaluated through 17 studies, spanning the five IFAD regions. Overall, the 17 impact assessments completed as part of IFAD10 show significant impacts on the lives of project beneficiaries relative to the corporate goal of greater economic mobility and its three supporting strategic objectives. In line with these findings, the results of the corporate impact assessment show that IFAD10 has exceeded its targets for its overall goal of fostering economic mobility and for two of the three strategic objectives.

This paper examines the impacts of the El Nino during the 2015/2016 season on maize productivity and income in rural Zambia. The analysis aims at identifying whether and how sustainable land management (SLM) practices and livelihood diversification strategies have contributed to moderate the impacts of such a weather shock. The analysis was conducted using a specifically designed survey called the El Nino Impact Assessment Survey (ENIAS), which is combined with the 2015 wave of the Rural Agricultural Livelihoods Surveys (RALS), as well as high resolution rainfall data from the Africa Rainfall Climatology version 2 (ARC2). This unique, integrated data set provides an opportunity to understand the impacts of shocks like El Nino that are expected to get more frequent and severe in Zambia, as well as understand the agricultural practices and livelihood strategies that can buffer household production and welfare from the impacts of such shocks to drive policy recommendations. Results show that households affected by the drought experienced a decrease in maize yield by around 20 percent, as well as a reduction in income up to 37 percent, all else equal. Practices that moderated the impact of the drought included livestock diversification, income diversification, and the adoption of agro-forestry. Interestingly, the use of minimum soil disturbance was not effective in moderating the yield and income effects of the drought. Policies to support livestock sector development, agroforestry adoption, and off -farm diversification should be prioritized as effective drought resiliency strategies in Zambia., FAO Document Repository: http://www.fao.org/3/ca3255en/CA3255EN.pdf

The Coastal Community Development Project (CCDP), implemented between 2013 and 2017, was designed to reduce poverty and achieve sustainable economic growth in 12 coastal districts of Indonesia. The project took a comprehensive approach, combining sustainable marine and coastal natural resource management with economic and livelihood development in coastal and small island communities where poverty was endemic. It invested in fisheries, aquaculture, and related marketing and support structures. Project participants were provided with fishing gear and motorized engines for their fishing boats, enabling them to fish further from the coast, and thus catch a more diverse array of higher-value fish. They were linked to profitable markets, and fish processing groups were established that primarily enabled local women to process and market fish. Infrastructure groups were created to construct village information centers, fish smokehouses, processing warehouses and marketplaces. Additionally, the project provided cooler boxes to store fresh fish and reduce post-harvest losses. It also offered support for food-safety certification. Steps were taken to improve the governance and management of marine resources, including through village-based integrated coastal management plans and the designation of marine protection areas. An impact assessment of CCDP was conducted in 2018. The assessment used a mixed-methods approach that combined quantitative household-level and community-level surveys and a qualitative survey (focus groups discussions and key informant interviews).

International discussions on climate change increasingly recognize the importance of agriculture in adaptation and mitigation efforts. This study estimates the mitigation potential of agricultural practices supported by IFAD’s current investments in order to provide guidance for the design of future investments. Using data from field studies in scientific literature, this research estimates the effects of a large set of agricultural practices promoted by IFAD (and other development agencies) on soil organic carbon stocks, nitrous oxide emissions from soils, and methane emissions from rice paddies. Findings identify soil and rice management practices with the largest mitigation potential and those that can potentially increase emissions; discuss uncertainties in mitigation analyses; and provide recommendations to improve monitoring of mitigation benefits.

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) aims at enhancing the capacity of farming systems to sustainably support food security in the context of climatic changes (CC). Questions arise about the profitability of alternative farming options and their cost-effectiveness in mitigating CC. A large dataset has been built through household surveys, key informant interviews and focus group discussions conducted in different agro ecological zones of Malawi. Farmers adopt a wide combination of sustainable land management (SLM) practices, earning often higher yields, profits and returns to labor than under conventional farming. Differences are more significant in dry areas indicating potential for CC adaptation. However, this may come at excessive costs in terms of capital and labor. Negative marginal abatement costs for most SLM options show synergies between increased farm incomes and CC mitigation. Cost- effectiveness of agriculture management practices is proposed as policy decision criterion to prioritize CSA interventions on the basis of economic efficiency in greenhouse gases abatement., Italian Review of Agricultural Economics, Vol 71 No 1 (2016): Vol 71, No 1 (Suppl.) (2016)

This paper aims at presenting empirical evidence from Zambia to better understand the linkages between climatic shocks, livelihood diversification and welfare outcomes with the goal of highlighting potential policy entry points to incentivize the types of diversification aimed at improving food security and resilience to climate shocks. We also investigate the role of different institutions in shaping diversification decisions to shed some light into potential policy levers at institutional level., FAO Document Repository: http://www.fao.org/3/a-i6277e.pdf

This paper investigates factors that impact cropland, labour and income diversification decisions and subsequent impacts on welfare. We use geo-referenced household data collected in 2011 from Malawi. The results show that measures of climate risk generally increase diversification across labour, cropland and income indicating that rainfall riskiness is a “push” factor for these indices. Our results also reveal that “pull” factors such as household wealth and education status of the household generally increase diversification across labour, land and income. Results also show that vulnerability to poverty is lower in environments with greater climate variability. Availability of services and support from rural institutions tends to increase diversification and reduce vulnerability to poverty. Looking at welfare measures as a function of diversification indices, all three measures of diversification increase consumption per capita, but income diversification has the strongest impacts on current consumption per capita and in reducing vulnerability to poverty.

Climate variability, associated with farm-income variability, is recognized as one of the main drivers of livelihood diversification strategies in developing countries. Analysing determinants of livelihood diversification choices, to better understand household strategic behaviour in the event of climatic risks and other shocks, is important for the formulation of development policies in developing countries highly dependent on rain-fed agriculture, like Malawi. We use geo-referenced farm-household-level data collected in 2010-11 to investigate how climatic variability influences the pattern of diversification that farmers adopt, and the impacts of these choices on welfare. To do so we apply the 'vulnerability to expected poverty' approach which measures the future level of poverty taking into consideration the role of risk and uncertainty. The analysis considers the effect of policies and institutions such as fertilizer subsidies, extension services, safety-net and credit on diversification choices. The results show that higher levels of climate risk generally increase the likelihood of diversification across labour, cropland and income, suggesting the importance of diversification as a response to constraints imposed by increased risk. In contrast, we find that in areas with favourable average rainfall conditions households are more likely to diversify income, suggesting diversification as a response to opportunities. In terms of welfare, the analysis performed on the components of vulnerability to poverty provides evidence that climatic variables are key determinants of both components of vulnerability (expected consumption and its variance). Fertilizer subsidies are found to be significant in diversification choices for all dimensions and also particularly effective in reducing vulnerability to poverty in high variability environments although the same does not hold for extension. Looking at differences across gender, we find that women labour diversification is less responsive than men's, resulting in a lower positive impact on expected consumption per capita., FAO Document Repository: http://www.fao.org/3/a-i4887e.pdf

This paper explores the relationship between social capital and crop diversity. The study is conducted in an area of Ethiopia where inter-specific diversity is significant and that diversity includes crops that are of important in terms of their genetic value since it is a center of origin or diversity for these crops. The results indicate that linking social capital does not lead to a decline in crop diversity but actually increases it suggesting that interventions by formal organizations need not lead to reduction in inter-specific diversity. However, the results also suggest that households with strong social links within a community (bonding social capital) are less likely to be diversified implying that policies that seek to promote sustainable utilization should be wary of only working to promote greater grassroots organization since this may not support crop diversity., FAO Document Repository: http://www.fao.org/3/a-ah804e.pdf

In this paper we use a unique dataset from eastern Ethiopia to explore the role of crop genetic resources in attaining household food security. The study area is a center of origin and domestication for sorghum, and about three quarters of the farms are growing land race varieties of sorghum rather than improved varieties; while about three quarters of farms grow improved varieties of wheat rather than land races. Our analysis has indicated that there is an important link between crop genetic diversity and the choice of coping mechanism households adopt in the face of a production shock from drought.

The understatement or omission of the environmental costs and benefits associated with forest management options results in project evaluations and policy prescriptions that are less than socially optimal. The aim of this paper is to examine the full rang, FAO Document Repository: http://www.fao.org/3/a-ae056t.pdf

We summarize existing theoretical claims linking poverty to rates of deforestation and then examine this linkage empirically for Costa Rica during the 20th century using an econometric approach that addresses the irreversibilities in deforestation. Our da, FAO Document Repository: http://www.fao.org/3/a-ae401t.pdf

We review theory linking poverty to deforestation and examine this link using multiple observations of Costa Rica after 1960. Country-wide disaggregate data facilitate empirical analysis of poverty’s location and its impact on deforestation. If where the poor live is not controlled for, poverty’s impact is confounded with differences between richer and poorer areas. Without controls for location there is no apparent effect of poverty. Using our data over time to implement controls for location, however, we find that the poor are marginalized, on less profitable land. With our controls for location, the poorer areas appear to be cleared more rapidly. This suggests that poverty reduction aids forest conservation. For the very poorest areas, this result is weaker and another effect is found: deforestation in the poorest areas responds less to productivity, i.e. the poorest people appear to have less ability to expand on productive or to reduce on unproductive land.

This paper presents the construction of a spatially explicit, nationally disaggregated measure of poverty over time in Costa Rica. The paper first describes the two possible methods considered for the construction of a poverty map: principal component ana, FAO Document Repository: http://www.fao.org/3/a-ae403t.pdf

We review claims about the potential for carbon markets that link both payments for carbon services and poverty levels to ongoing rates of tropical deforestation. We then examine these effects empirically for Costa Rica during the 20th century using an econometric approach that addresses the irreversibilities in deforestation. We find significant effects of the relative returns to forest on deforestation rates. Thus, carbon payments would induce conservation and also carbon sequestration, and if land users were poor could conserve forest while addressing rural poverty. However, we find poorer areas are less responsive to returns. This and transaction costs could lead carbon payments policies not to be focused upon the poor. Other practical considerations may also dampen an understandable enthusiasm for service-based payments addressing both environment and inequality. Nonetheless, as the poor live in areas with more forest, they may benefit most from payments., FAO Document Repository: http://www.fao.org/3/ae402e/ae402e00.pdf

Land use change is a key requirement for improving rural incomes and making a significant reduction in poverty levels globally. Over 70% of the world's poor are located in rural areas, with land use as a major source of subsistence. Improving the productivity of their land use systems is essential for increasing incomes and food security among them. Land use change is also a relatively low cost and rapidly implementable means of climate change mitigation. To the extent that the land use changes required for poverty alleviation coincide with that required for carbon sequestration, significant synergies can be harnessed in meeting both objectives. Estimates of predicted supply costs and demand prices indicate that several types of land use change appropriate for small and low income landusers will be a competitive source of emission reduction credits, although again there is considerable uncertainty in the final form of the market. However, even where there is significant potential for sequestration payments to contribute to poverty alleviation, considerable effort will be required to move from the objectives to the reality. In some cases this may be made through the structure of carbon sequestration payment programs, to address the investment and insurance needs of poor producers and provide adequate incentives for participation. In other cases larger institutional and policy reforms may be necessary in order to create the conditions necessary for poor landusers to benefit from carbon sequestration payments., FAO Document Repository: http://www.fao.org/3/a-ae046t.pdf