By Xinhua
Manila : The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will provide $2 million to formulate and implement policies to combat land degradation and reduce the risk of climate change in the developing countries, the bank said Wednesday.
“Investing in agriculture and natural resource research is an essential means of reducing poverty and stimulating agricultural and economic growth. It also improves productivity,” said Tun Lin, natural resources economist of the ADB’s East Asia Department.
“In Asia, one of the most urgent and rewarding areas for research is to develop effective technologies, institutions and policies to deal with land degradation and climate change,” Tun Lin added.
The $2.863 million project has three components each targeting a select group of developing countries, the ADB said in a press release.
The first component will be for China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The component will involve analysis of existing land use policy and institutional and environmental factors that influence land degradation.
The second component targets Bangladesh, China, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. It will involve analysis of climate variability and its impact on cropping pattern, structures of income and employment, adaptation-coping strategies for the rural poor, and identification of best practices and institutional innovations to lessen the effects of climate change.
All developing countries will be covered by the final component, which will focus on strengthening the capacity of ADB to coordinate, supervise, monitor and evaluate agriculture and natural resources activities.
The assistance provided by the ADB to support agriculture and natural resources research policy, was adopted in 1995, has played an important role in addressing the bank’s overall objective of poverty reduction, regional cooperation and sustainable environmental management.
Despite recent economic progress in the Asian and Pacific region, it is also home to two-thirds of the world’s poor. Some 600 million people in the region live on less than one dollar a day.
The agricultural sector paves the way for economic growth in poorer nations, given that majority of poor people live in rural areas and rely on agriculture, said the bank.
The Millennium Development Goals serve as blue print for nations and development institutions in fighting poverty and improving lives. The first goal seeks to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger by reducing it to half — the proportion of people living on less than one dollar a day and of people suffering from hunger, by 2015.