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30 June 2020 General
Of a total of around 570 million farms in the world, more than 80% are smaller than two hectares. Hundreds of millions of these smallholders depend on agriculture and forestry for their livelihoods, and produce more than half of the world’s food. They have the potential to play a key role in achieving inclusive and climate-smart development. Currently, however, many of these smallholders live below the poverty line and are highly vulnerable to climate change. They are a sleeping giant, whose potential can be unleashed by helping them to improve their production and economic viability. But for this they need funding to invest in sustainable production practices, organization, access to information and markets, and the development of small and medium enterprises.
30 June 2020 Philippines
Participatory multi-stakeholder dialogues in the Philippines lead to inclusive and well-informed decision-making on land conversion and water provisioning.
30 June 2020 Colombia
Cattle ranchers and indigenous people are often not good neighbours. The municipality of Solano, in the southern Colombian province of Caquetá, was no exception. After the guerrilla movement FARC was disarmed in 2016, a power vacuum developed in the region. Ranchers and indigenous people came to oppose each other. But by establishing a dialogue between the two groups, mutual respect and trust has grown and room has been created to work on joint solutions.
30 June 2020 Liberia
The Liberian government is weak, which affects forest governance, among other things. The weekly radio programme Forest Hour ensures that forest issues are addressed and put on the agenda of the national Forest Development Authority.
30 June 2020 Ghana
In Ghana, an innovative system has been set up for community-based real-time monitoring of forestry activities and governance. By means of smartphones, about 200 trained monitors collect evidence about compliance with social responsibility agreements (SRAs), logging in forests, compensation and other aspects. The information is shared on the web-based platform ForestLink and then verified and processed by intermediary CSOs. It is then that the Forestry Commission, with whom the platform works well in a strong alliance, has access to the information and may take remediate actions.
30 June 2020 Bolivia
A couple of years ago, the restructuring of forest management began in the Bolivian Indigenous Territory of Lomerío. This should lead to better logging plans, higher timber prices and a better distribution of income from logging. Villagers will benefit from this.