The subprogramme main goal is to support women and men in rural households in Kenya, Sri Lanka and Zambia to practice environmentally-friendly and climate-adaptive agricultural and land use practices. Specifically, the project aims at facilitating evidence-based green and inclusive recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic through approaches that combine social protection with complementary service provision (extension support, early warning and e-extension).

The subprogramme will support three specific outputs:

Output 1: Increased access to integrated services for environmentally-friendly and climate-adaptive agricultural and land use practices among female and male vulnerable small-scale producers.

Output 2. Increased capacity of government staff at national and sub-national levels to design and implement integrated, gender-sensitive, and multi-sectoral green recovery programmes in rural areas. 

Output 3: Increased evidence on the impact, including gendered impact, and effectiveness of integrating social protection with complementary services to scale up inclusive and green development in rural areas and integrated into global and national policy discussions.

Set-up and Planning: 

The subprogramme is currently in its inception phase. It is coordinated by the Inclusive Rural Transformation and Gender Equality Division (ESP) and supported by a Task Force comprised of different FAO technical units and country offices. The Task Force is in the process of working with ministries and local stakeholders to design and target interventions. 

Challenges and lessons learned: 

Political turmoil in Sri Lanka and elections in Kenya are a risk to project implementation. Project implementation has continued without major setbacks by working closely with technical staff in the governments of these countries.