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With financial support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) leads the establishment of a data and analysis facility in the context of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and other shocks. The objective of the facility is to improve decision making in support of the food security and livelihoods of all actors in key agricultural, livestock and fisheries value chains in high priority food crisis countries, with a focus on producers.This assessment was conducted between July and September 2020 across 16 governorates of Yemen.See the full list of [...]

Agricultural workers are exposed to many risks during their life cycle and are particularly vulnerable to covariate risks, such as droughts, armed conflict and pandemics. Despite the great potential of social protection policies to protect this segment of the population, agricultural workers are commonly excluded from social protection systems—especially from contributory schemes—due to legal, programme design, financial, administrative, institutional, participation, and information barriers. This paper analyses the availability of social insurance schemes for agricultural workers in the Near East and North Africa (NENA) region, including many types of insurance: old age, disability and survivors’, sickness and maternity, work injury, and unemployment, [...]

Climate change poses a major threat to reducing poverty, eradicating hunger, and achieving sustainable development. It accelerates the frequency and intensity of extreme natural hazards, thus affecting the lives and livelihoods of those living in rural areas. Protecting poor and vulnerable small-scale food producers from climate change-related risks is necessary for achieving FAO’s strategic objectives and Sustainable Development Goals 1 (ending poverty) and 2 (zero hunger). This brief stresses the important role social protection plays in supporting inclusive climate risk-management strategies that contribute to safeguarding livelihoods and increasing the resilience of households.

On top of a decade of exacerbated disaster loss, exceptional global heat, retreating ice and rising sea levels, humanity and our food security face a range of new and unprecedented hazards, such as megafires, extreme weather events, desert locust swarms of magnitudes previously unseen, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Agriculture underpins the livelihoods of over 2.5 billion people – most of them in low-income developing countries – and remains a key driver of development. At no other point in history has agriculture been faced with such an array of familiar and unfamiliar risks, interacting in a hyperconnected world and a precipitously [...]

Globally, and with only a few exceptions, rural and indigenous women fare worse than rural men and urban women and men on every indicator for which data are available. Although they share challenges in the form of rural location and genderbased discrimination, rural women and girls are not a homogeneous group. The opportunities and constraints they face differ across their lifetimes, contexts and circumstances; they are influenced by location and socio-economic statusand social identities associated with other forms of marginalization, such as indigenous origin and ethnicity, age, disability, migrant or refugee status. The complex experiences of rural and indigenous women [...]

The aim of this study is to provide readers with an overview of how agricultural insurance and social protection interventions can complement each other, within the frame of disaster risk management for vulnerable agricultural actors. Specifically, it aims to underline the operational nuances, challenges, opportunities and constraints associated with employing agricultural insurance within social protection systems. Furthermore, it presents a number of practical lessons learned and considerations that can be used by relevant public stakeholders (such as local policymakers and development agencies) to introduce aspects of agricultural insurance in programmes and initiatives that seek to strengthen social protection for vulnerable [...]

This action sheet is part of a series of action sheets developed under the seven key priority areas of the FAO COVID-19 Response and Recovery program, the FAO umbrella program designed to proactively and sustainably address the socio-economic impacts of the pandemic. Each action sheet includes a project proposal in support of countries most in need for which FAO is leveraging high-level political, financial, and technical expertise. All action sheets are gathered on the Food Coalition web hub, where members of the Coalition - a multi-stakeholder global alliance for unified global action in response to COVID-19 -  can easily access [...]

Gender focal points are part of the Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAOs) institutional architecture for gender, and play a key role in supporting the delivery of gender-related work.This handbook is intended to support the gender focal points, at FAO headquarters and in the decentralized offices, in addressing gender issues in their work.More specifically, the purpose of the handbook is to serve as a comprehensive and practical reference tool for gender focal points to support their respective divisions and offices in complying with the requirements set by the corporate Policy on Gender Equality. It can also serve as a valuable resource [...]

In 2020, the corona virus spread around the globe, and its containment measures resulted in unprecedented socio-economic impacts. ASEAN region’s economy is estimated to experience a decline between 3.5 and 4.7 per cent for 2020. The restrictions to contain the virus spread, although necessary, hit many households income, particularly of the most vulnerable. Yet other disasters have continued to hit the region. Convergence of the impacts of compounded shocks from multiple hazards, can push vulnerable households into deeper or prolonged deprivation and poverty.Social protection is a core part of the efforts to mitigate the impact of COVID-19, facilitate speedy recovery [...]

Based on past experience of partnership on support to National Rice Development Strategies (NRDS) within Coalition for African Rice Development (CARD), AfricaRice and FAO decided to conduct a series of rice policy reviews for Ghana, Ivory Coast and Mali in 2019. The following study uses the Ex-ante Carbon-balance Value Chain tool (EX-ACT VC), developed in 2016 by FAO, to assess the Ghanaian rice value chain’s environmental (in terms of climate mitigation and climate resilience) and socio-economic impact for a business as usual scenario in 2020 compared to a growth scenario for 2030.Promotion of good agricultural practices (GAP), the reduction of [...]