ADDRESSING THE XXI CENTURY CLIMATE CHANGE CHALLENGES: IMPROVING RESILIENCE OF AGRO-ECOSYSTEM SERVICES FOR FOOD SECURITY
Challenges to agricultural production and food security in Senegal: it is time for a transformational change!
Through the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the country mobilized the Global Environment Facility GEF-6 funds (USD 7.2 million 2015-2021) to implement the Agricultural Value Chains Resilience Support Project (PARFA). The project focuses on improving agro-ecosystem services food security, and incomes of small-scale farmers, by creating remunerative employment for rural people - especially youth and women – in the most sustainable perspective, including land preservation, greening agricultural and transformation activities. Under the authority of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Equipment (M.A.E.R.) of the Republic of Senegal, PARFA is jointly implemented by UNIDO and IFAD, acting as GEF executing agencies within the framework of the GEF’s Integrated Approach Pilot (IAP) for Food Security, called ‘Resilient Food Systems’, its regional programme supporting Sub-Saharan countries.
Challenge
The PARFA Project intends to adequately address the sustainable growth challenge. The strategic focus is on innovation and improving inclusion in existing agricultural value chains in order to safeguard the Senegalese productive bases and ecosystem services (land, water, forest, etc.) while enhancing sustainability and improving resilience to climate variability of the agricultural production systems.
Environmental degradations weigh upon the agricultural sector and threaten food security
The environmental degradations affecting the quality and quantity of Senegalese agricultural production are multifactorial (climate variability, land degradation linked to population growth, ecosystems unprotected etc.) Despite its undeniable strengths, Senegal’s agricultural sector faces consequently many issues regarding the proper management of its environment and natural resources in order to implement a sustainable agricultural intensification system in line with the increase of its population.
Ensuring the production systems resilience to climate change
By decreasing post-harvest losses, promoting energy efficiency and use of renewable energy across the six PARFA’s agro-value chains in Senegal, UNIDO addresses unsustainable use of land, and water and dependency on non-renewable energy that weigh upon the quality and quantity of the agricultural products and the food security condition. The challenge is to support innovations in food production and spread tools and practices to reduce the impact of the environmental degradations on local agricultural and livestock production, and consequently improve the economic and ecological environment of the smallholders and rural communities.
Within the framework of UNIDO’s programmes, the project is a component of the Country Partnership Programme (PCP) that UNIDO signed with the Government of Senegal and which includes the development of the private sector, the environment, and the green energies. In line with the GEF’s IAP-Food Security, UNIDO’s interventions are framed by the three components of the Ecosystem Services Approach:
Nexus Natural capital - Industrial operations
1. Engage: Promotion of multistakeholders platforms integrating issues on environmental degradation and climate variability in their activities while strengthening institutional framework.
Nexus Environment - Agriculture
2. Act: Improvement of agricultural value chains based on the resilience approach and the upscaling of sustainable and resilient good practices.
Nexus Knowledge management - Policy and Action
3. Track: Mechanism for monitoring and assessing environmental impact and food security situation and project outcomes at the regional level.
CIRCULAR ECONOMY APPROACH & TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGES
UNIDO’s approach to transformative changes, as defined by the GEF, is determined by the intentional changes carried out in agro-value chains, as ideal pathways to elicit transformative changes in the four economic systems (food system, energy system, urban system and the production and consumption system). These transformative changes are rooted in UNIDO’s Inclusive Sustainable Industrial Development (ISID) and apply the circular economy principles in which products are designed to be reused, remanufactured, up-cycled or recycled back into the production system.