General

The Drought Recovery and Climate Resilience Project is an integrated operation to strengthen the capacity of the rural communities to address the inter-linked challenges of climate change, rural poverty, food insecurity and land degradation through the provision of water harvesting infrastructure, and improving food production and marketing activities as well as capacity building for the affected communities. This project consists of three approaches for scaling up agriculture water infrastructure development through: (1) small irrigation schemes, (ii) construction and installation of water harvesting structures and (iii) installation of water treatment plants with desalination systems powered by solar panel systems. The DRARP is a critical intervention as the effects and impacts of climate change are already being felt due to erratic and inadequate rainfall patterns and declining on-farm productivity as a result of the increasing intensity of adverse climatic conditions. The project will support the improvement of food security and marketing to increase resilience to climate change and provide capacity building on climate change risk management in particular related to drought, and systems for monitoring and evaluation. The total project cost is 11.0 UA (15.51 million dollars) over 5 years (2018-2022) and will be implemented in the four drought prone districts of Magude, Matutuine, Chigubo and Chibuto with estimated total direct beneficiaries of 20,000 and additional 20,000 indirect beneficiaries. It consists of the three following components: I) Agriculture Water Infrastructure Development; (ii) improved Food Security and Marketing to Increase Resilience to Climate Change; and (iii) Project Management.

Objectives

The DRARP goal is to strengthen the capacity of the rural communities to address the inter-linked challenges of climate change, rural poverty, food insecurity and land degradation through the provision of water harvesting infrastructure, and improving food production and marketing activities as well as capacity building for the affected communities.

Target Groups

The selected communities are among those mostly affected by the drought and they will be the direct beneficiaries of the activities under the project. Public institutions such as the Ministry of Public Works and Water Resources, National Agricultural Research Institute and relevant Directorates in the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security and the provincial and district directorates of Agriculture and Public Works will benefit from the project interventions in terms of capacity building. Other indirect beneficiaries are health centers, public schools and district offices (benefiting from the rain water harvesting structures), processors, traders, entrepreneurs, various service providers, NGOs, etc. In addition to infrastructure and improved agricultural practices, innovative techniques needed for quality maintenance of infrastructure, nutrition modules, conservation and processing of food products will be developed. Many people will also benefit from the project through radio jingles that will disseminate some of the project’s nutrition and weather information, and training programs. Estimates plan for approximately 20.000 indirect beneficiaries.

General

Poor soil fertility and land degradation result in low production yields and quality for indigenous vegetables in West Africa. This project will address the challenges to improve vegetable production through fertilizer innovations. Increasing vegetable yields and quality This project will build on earlier research funded by the Canadian International Food Security Research Fund (CIFSRF), a program of IDRC undertaken with the financial support of the Government of Canada provided through Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada. Two earlier projects generated promising results to improve food security in West Africa for poor families. Using innovations developed in this earlier work, researchers will speed up adoption of innovative approaches that will use cost-saving fertilizer micro-dosing and better water management to improve indigenous vegetable production in Nigeria and Benin. The project team will develop, test, and deploy two different models (Innovations Platform and Satellite Dissemination Approach) that will reach and benefit more farmers with sustainable vegetable production and marketing approaches. They will connect women-led cooperatives and youth groups to the private sector and business organizations, directly reaching more than 255,000 households. The team's work will involve further developing commercial seed production, postharvest handling, and value chains. They will also strengthen producer groups. Project leadership A consortium of five universities in Canada, Benin, and Nigeria will lead the project. They will mobilize at least 20 private sector partners and government agencies to build small and medium vegetable and fertilizer businesses. Their work will serve to double the income of approximately one million farmers in West Africa along the vegetable value chain.

General

The purpose of this project is to map rhino movements to optimize the design of and conservation practices in the Khata corridor of the Terai Arc Landscape of Nepal. This will be done by: (a) organizing a central level consultation meeting in Kathmandu to establish the roles and responsibilities of organizations participating in the project; (b) obtaining government approval to place GPS collars on rhinos; (c) procuring the necessary equipment for conduct of the project; (d) conducting a field level coordination meeting at Bardia National Park to coordinate field level activities among the various involved agencies; (e) training the four local people who will carry out the projects field duties; (f) capturing, collaring and tracking four rhinos for one year; (g) mapping the land-use and land cover data in Khata corridor using high resolutions satellite imagery; (h) interpreting the images and assigning rhino movement data to land-use and land cover classes based on wildlife habitat suitability; (I) assessing and classifying the forests of the project area into different classes based on succession and restoration; (j) overlaying the GPS locations from the collared rhinos on the land-use and land cover maps to determine how rhinos move through the corridor habitat matrix; (k) using the preferred habitats of rhinos in the Khata to optimize land-use planning; (l) using the rhino habitat use data to develop a tactical patrolling plan for use by the CBAPO at the local level; and (m) utilizing the project data in assessing the potential of the Karnali, Basanta and Laljhadi corridors for rhino movement.