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Improved Land Tenancy in Sindh Province - GCP/PAK/137/EC

Year of publication 2023

Place of publication Rome, Italy ;

Pages 2

Publisher FAO ;

Product type Project

Synopsis (short abstract) Rural poverty in Pakistan is generally characterized by fragmented landholdings, landlessness, low skills, illiteracy, poor access to social and economic services and political disempowerment, a situation perpetuated by stratified social relations. These constraints particularly affect Sindh Province, the poorest and most food insecure province in the country with 53 percent of the population in rural Sindh living below the poverty line and 71 percent of all households suffering from food insecurity. Farm sizes vary considerably across the province, with medium and large farms generally run by tenants (haris). Most harislack clear and legally enforceable tenure rights over the land on which their livelihoods depend, leaving them vulnerable to poverty and exploitation. Arrangements between landlords and tenants (haris) are mainly informal and often result in indebtedness for the latter, leading to bonded labour. The objective of the project was to improve the governance of land (and in particular tenure security) and water in Sindh Province in line with Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the context of National Food Security (VGGT), with a particular focus on female and male smallholder farmers and other disadvantaged populations (haris).

Language English

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    Evaluation of the project "Improved Land Tenancy in Sindh Province
    Project code: GCP/PAK/137/EC
    2022
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    The Improved Land Tenancy in Sindh Province (ILTS) project, funded by the European Union and in partnership with the Government of Sindh, aims at contributing to responsible land and water governance in Sindh Province and helping its government and land users to address challenges they face regarding land tenure, food security and natural resources management. Its approach is based on the promotion of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGT). The evaluation found that the project generated benefits in the domain of civic governance but not in the domain of official governance. Facilitated by its community-level platforms, the project’s outputs contributed significantly to tenant and landlord beneficiaries through the transparency, security and accessibility associated with informal land tenancy agreements and village grievance redressal committees. To this extent, the project has nurtured community-based civic governance for secure landlord-tenant agreements in its project area. The project’s VGGT strategy suffered from limitations in project design and the strategy. Furthermore, no improvements were reported in livestock productivity and community-based disaster risk reduction, which has not yet been introduced. Recommendations to FAO include actions to strengthen targeting, social inclusion, monitoring and evaluation, and sustainability and suggestions on how to optimize engagement with the government and other stakeholders in view of project experiences.
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    Brochure, flyer, fact-sheet
    EU Transversal support to country implementation - Pakistan
    Improved Land Tenancy in Sindh
    2020
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    More than 75 percent of Pakistan’s poor live in rural areas. The distribution of assets in rural areas is highly skewed, particularly with regard to access to land and water. This has resulted in high chronic rural poverty which has grown in recent years due to slow agricultural growth as well as the damage and losses to crops and livestock caused by natural disasters over the past decade. In 2012, it was estimated that 7.74 million people were employed in rural areas, the majority of them working as landless sharecroppers (i.e. peasants and tenants – known as “haris”) and wage workers on farms. About 20-40 percent of rural households are reported to be landless or near landless. Poverty is highly correlated with landlessness and is seen as contributing to political and social instability. Repeated government attempts to address inequality of access to land and tenure insecurity have largely failed to transform the system. Insecure land tenure, coupled with poor forest, fisheries and water policy management, have led to increasing degradation of land. Injudicious water use has led to waterlogging in some areas, while poor water distribution has created disputes. The lack of on-farm water management has caused water scarcity in other areas, lowering the profitability of land, the incentive to invest in complementary inputs and acute issues of drought and salinity.
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    Project
    Emergency Support to Improve Food Security and Agriculture-Based Subsistence Livelihoods of Drought-Affected Population in Balochistan and Sindh Provinces of Pakistan - TCP/PAK/3705 2022
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    Pakistan has an estimated population of around 208 million, with 40 9 million living below the national poverty line The country is not only prone to natural disasters that adversely impact the food security and livelihoods of its inhabitants, but is also vulnerable to climatic changes that are expected to increase the occurrence and severity of droughts in the southern part of the country, especially in Balochistan and Sindh provinces, where between 65 and 95 percent of the population lives in rural areas Drought is increasingly common in these provinces, with serious consequences on food security, livestock, crops, water resources, the environment and aquifers In August 2018 the Provincial Disaster Management Authority of Sindh identified 513 villages in eight districts of Sindh as calamity hit (drought affected) In December 2018 18 districts in Balochistan were identified as calamity hit by the PDMA, Balochistan Both Sindh and Balochistan provinces have a high prevalence of poverty and food insecurity The incidence of multidimensional poverty is 43 percent and 71 percent in Sindh and Balochistan respectively, and even higher in rural areas According to the preliminary results of a National Nutrition Survey in 2018 global acute malnutrition rates are above emergency thresholds in most drought affected districts A Sindh drought needs assessment conducted in October 2018 classified between 32 and 36 percent of HHs 0 72 0 89 million people) as severely food insecure and 1 1 6 million people classified as moderately food insecure A similar assessment conducted in 14 drought affected districts of Balochistan in January 2019 indicated that 58 percent of surveyed HHs experienced moderate or severe hunger In response to the drought emergency in the two provinces the PDMAs declared a state of calamity in the affected districts while the NDMA requested the United Nations System to activate an emergency response coordination system A drought response plan for emergency support to 2 1 million people in the prioritized districts was developed, with a funding requirement of USD 96 3 million in January 2019 to be led by FAO and the World Food Programme ( The current project was developed to provide immediate emergency assistance to extremely food insecure drought affected agro pastoralist communities in the provinces of Balochistan (in Nushki and Chaghi districts) and Sindh (in Umerkot and Sanghar districts) The project would also conduct an Integrated Food Security Phase Classification ( acute food insecurity.
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