Ending Extreme Poverty In Rural Areas Sustaining Livelihoods To Leave No One Behind

Sustainable Development Goal 1, ending poverty in all its forms, everywhere, is the most ambitious goal set by the 2030 Agenda. This Goal includes eradicating extreme poverty in the next 12 years, which will require more focused actions in addition to broad-based interventions. The question is: How can we achieve target 1.1 and overcome the many challenges that lie ahead? By gaining a deeper understanding of poverty, and the characteristics of the extreme rural poor in particular, the right policies can be put in place to reach those most in need. This report presents the contribution that agriculture, food systems and the sustainable use of natural resources can make to securing the livelihoods of the millions of poor people who struggle in our world.

Today, about 783 million people live in extreme poverty. Extreme poverty is primarily a rural phenomenon, with 80 percent of the extreme poor living in rural areas, across greatly diverse rural landscapes. Despite great progress in poverty reduction, the standard of living of the poorest of the poor has remained almost unchanged in the past 35 years, signaling that a huge gap in policy making and programmatic approaches are leaving them behind. FAO has established a Corporate Framework on Rural Extreme Poverty to orient and bring to bear the relevant work of the Organization towards reaching Target 1.1 of the SDGs. Eliminating extreme poverty is directly linked to eliminating hunger (SDG 2), as well as other SDGs. When the extreme poor have means to a better life, they no longer suffer from hunger and can invest in a better future for their families and communities. The Framework reinforces the application of other Corporate Frameworks, particularly those related to gender equality, social protection, sustaining peace, and migration. This makes the Framework applicable to many areas of FAO’s work, accelerating efforts to eliminate extreme poverty in rural areas. The Framework identifies four key areas to reach the rural extreme poor: ensuring food security and nutrition, promoting economic inclusion, fostering environmentally sustainable and resilient livelihoods and preventing and protecting the extreme poor against risks and shocks. To ensure its ability to eradicate rural extreme poverty, the Framework establishes the following five deliverables: 1. Better align the areas of FAO’s mandate into global and national actions to eradicate extreme poverty. 2. Increased capacity to reach the extreme poor by undertaking poverty analysis 3. Develop dedicated and integrated approaches for the rural extreme poor. 4. Ensure that FAO’s actions do not create poverty. 5. Account for FAO’s contribution to SDG 1, and in particular, to Target 1.1.

The ambitious 15-year agenda known as the Sustainable Development Goals, adopted in 2015 by all members of the United Nations, contains a pledge that “no one will be left behind.” This book aims to translate that bold global commitment into an action-oriented mindset, focused on supporting specific people in specific places who are facing specific problems. In this volume, experts from Japan, the United States, Canada, and other countries address a range of challenges faced by people across the globe, including women and girls, smallholder farmers, migrants, and those living in extreme poverty. These are many of the people whose lives are at the heart of the aspirations embedded in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. They are the people most in need of such essentials as health care, quality education, decent work, affordable energy, and a clean environment. This book is the result of a collaboration between the Japan International Cooperation Research Institute and the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings. It offers practical ideas for transforming “leave no one behind” from a slogan into effective actions which, if implemented, will make it possible to reach the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. In addition to policymakers in the field of sustainable development, this book will be of interest to academics, activists, and leaders of international organizations and civil society groups who work every day to promote inclusive economic and social progress.

Public policies for family farming – when done appropriately – provide a perfect match between different policy areas related to productive, economic, social, environmental and cultural dimensions of sustainable food systems. The Learning framework for inclusive, integrated and innovative public policy cycles for family farming was developed under the framework of the United Nations Decade of Family Farming (2019–2028) to support policymakers, family farmers’ organizations and other relevant stakeholders to increase their understanding of public policy cycles and family farming related policies. This technical and methodological capacity development programme is adaptable to local, national or regional priorities. It offers a holistic perspective to building knowledge and capacity of the various actors involved in the design, implementation and review of effective and coherent policies and programmes. This learning framework responds to the needs of multiple actors, expressed during the UNDFF pre-consultation process, to identify ways to create truly effective and efficient policy frameworks for family farming, and to better engage and participate during policy processes. To provide an appropriate answer to these needs the learning framework was designed through a participatory process building on the experience of governments and family farmers’ organizations, researchers and UN staff, gathering inputs from all relevant actors around the world.

FAO recognizes that those living in rural areas whose livelihoods depend heavily on natural resources, are disproportionately affected by climate risks because of their great likelihood of living in high-risk geographical locations as well as their high vulnerability to, and limited capacity to cope with, climate hazards due to low incomes, lack of savings, weaker social networks, low asset bases and heavy reliance on agriculture and natural resources. Protecting poor and vulnerable small scale producers from the negative impacts of climate risks is an imperative in order to reach FAO’s strategic objectives and achieve Sustainable development goal one and two. Managing Climate risks through social protection sheds light on social protection as an effective investment to safeguard the livelihood of small scale producers and strengthen their essential role in ensuring food security across the globe.

This report presents the results of a collaboration between FAO and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), at the University of Oxford. The first part of the report proposes a framework for measuring multidimensional poverty in rural areas and describes the motivation for the Rural Multidimensional Poverty Index (R-MPI) proposal, which departs from the established global Multidimensional Poverty Index (global MPI), first designed in 2010 as an international measure of acute poverty covering over 100 developing countries by adding modifications in the dimensions and embedded indicators. The second part of this report presents an empirical test of the proposed R-MPI, using data from four household surveys conducted in Ethiopia, Malawi, the Niger, and Nigeria which are harmonized within the Rural Livelihoods Information System (RuLIS).

Beginning in the second half of the twentieth century, the impacts of climate change have been fierce, causing loss of human life and irreparable destruction to natural and man-made infrastructure in many parts of the world. The difference between climate change now and in the past is that of sudden and disproportionate disruption of the natural energy dynamics by the changing consumption patterns of billions of human beings who have polluted terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. The picture that emerges from the exhaustive analysis of international data drawn from the most reliable sources indicates that we have possibly gained access to the gateway of extinction and it is time that we take corrective steps immediately. Global climate change is further altering our relationship with the environment, modifying relatively stable climatic factors and making them uncertain, unpredictable, and threatening. Changes in land use and an increasing demand for water resources due to climate change have affected the capacity of ecosystems to sustain food production, ensure the supply of freshwater resources, provide ecosystem services, and promote rural multi-functionality. Ensuring food production does not just depend on increasing water efficiency, promoting climate resilient crop production, or reducing land-use competition for urbanization but also on a more suitable and stable climate as the changes in climatic factors like precipitation, temperature, radiation, evaporation, and wind bring about some major shifts in global food supplies. According to Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES), focused on greenhouse gas emissions projections, and Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) conducted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), climate change increases the risk of simultaneous crop failures (including corn, rice, legumes, and vegetables) if irrigation systems are not fully adapted to water stress situations. A changing climate could have many adverse impacts on other sectors of our environment. This book offers concrete, up-to-date, and appropriate study cum research material for students, researchers, academicians and policymakers. It will be of a greater interest to students and researchers in the field of environmental science, agriculture science, agronomy, and sustainable development.

The World Social Report 2021 points to new directions in which rural development strategies need to be reconsidered. It offers strategic principles, programs of action, and a set of concrete policies that can be combined to devise effective strategies to help realize the potential of rural development and achieve the SDGs. Reexamining the narrow view of rural development, it expands the discussion to include the role of development in achieving the wider set of SDGs. In doing so, it pays particular attention to the interaction of rural development with SDG 6 (clean water and sanitation), SDG 8 (economic growth and decent work), SDG 9 (infrastructure), SDG 11 (sustainable communities), SDG 13 (climate change), SDG 14 (life below water) and SDG 15 (life on land). The interlinkages of all these Goals suggest that there exist potential synergies between rural development and sustainable efforts in many other directions.