TCP's ability to respond to urgent requests for assistance more quickly than other sources of development aid gives it a special catalytic role when timeliness is essential: for example, in emergencies following disasters, whether human-induced or natural, and in the containment of animal and pest disease outbreaks.
During the last decade, there have been numerous emergencies in which TCP projects have been among the first on the ground - famine in southern Africa and the People's Republic of Korea, civil strife in Bosnia and locust plagues in Africa and the Near East, to name but a few. In such cases, TCP bridged a critical gap while donors inevitably took time to organize and collect their resources for addressing the crisis. In many of these situations, TCP projects also provided invaluable assessments of immediate requirements, which formed the basis for appeals to donors and helped draw the attention of the international community to the need for urgent, large-scale assistance. In others, TCP projects played a coordinating role, for example in Rwanda, helping to ensure the effective delivery and distribution of large amounts of assistance from bilateral and NGO donors. In all such emergency interventions, TCP funding has been directed at accelerating the transition from relief and rehabilitation activities to broader programmes for sustainable development.
TCP PROJECTS AND THEIR CATALYTIC EFFECTS... |
A good example of TCP providing timely assistance was the case of Rwanda in 1994. FAO was able to help the government coordinate assistance given by numerous humanitarian organizations, and to catalyse more than US$37 million in international donor funding for essential agricultural needs. Funds channelled directly through FAO exceeded US$10.6 million, and a further US$2.3 million from IFAD are currently in the pipeline. On completion of the TCP project, FAO's coordination unit was funded from other sources and the activities of this unit were secured until at least mid-1998. Throughout the rehabilitation phase, the project provided the technical input and helped pave the way for preparation of the sectoral transition from an emergency to a development stage. It thus enabled FAO to play a leading role in cooperation with multilateral and bilateral funding agencies such as the World Bank, IFAD and the EC.
Similarly, in Bosnia Herzegovina, an emergency project funded by TCP enabled FAO to help the government assess the country's immediate agricultural needs, which were included in consolidated appeals to the international community, and to coordinate the assistance of donor agencies. As a result of the project, more than US$13 million were channelled directly through FAO for emergency and immediate rehabilitation activities in the country. FAO worked closely with the major multilateral and bilateral funding agencies, notably the World Bank, in preparing programmes for subsequent sustainable development.
Another example of timely action by TCP is the emergency assistance provided to combat the cypress aphid in Kenya. The aphid has been devastating industrial and agroforestry plantations and has spread to nine other countries in East and southern Africa. TCP emergency assistance served as a bridge to a longer-term integrated pest management (IPM) programme, which is part of the country's Five-Year Master Plan. The Plan includes assistance from UNEP in building national capacity in forest insect and disease management as well as a research and development component funded by the World Bank.
The rinderpest epidemic that affected tropical Africa in the 1980s triggered a series of TCP projects in several countries of the region. Responding to requests from member countries, FAO first initiated emergency action against rinderpest early in 1980. Between 1980 and 1989, TCP assistance amounting to more than US$11 million was provided for 62 national and 19 regional projects, covering the cost of vaccines and the implementation of emergency campaigns. Coordinated project action succeeded in halting the spread of rinderpest in Africa and also created an effective template for designing the Pan African Rinderpest Campaign. This programme has been funded and sustained principally by the EC, together with other donors such as the World Bank, the United Kingdom, Nigeria, Japan, Italy and France, who have provided a total of about US$120 million over ten years.
Similar rapid TCP interventions have led to donor-funded regional rinderpest projects in West and South Asia. Quality control of vaccines for major disease control campaigns (e.g. the Pan African Veterinary Vaccine Centre [PANVAC]) provides another example of work begun by TCP projects and extended with multilateral funding, in this case by UNDP, the EC and Japan. The same concept has been taken up in India under an EC project that is to become part of a broader EC-funded regional project for South Asia. |
