To meet the threat of climate change, Bangladesh launched a national strategy and action plan 2009. A multi donor climate change fund will help the government to implement the ten-year plan and Sweden will be contributing SEK 90 million.

Read more: http://www.sida.se/English/Countries-and-regions/Asia/Bangladesh/Program...

The small-scale farmers in Bolivia’s arid regions are very vulnerable to climate change. To meet the farmers’ needs and teach them new agricultural methods, the local authorities need to develop their capacity. This will be done through the threeyear project PROAGRO 2.

Read more: http://www.sida.se/English/Countries-and-regions/Latin-America/Bolivia/P...

Sustainable poverty reduction requires access to natural resources. While natural resource tenure includes rights over land, it encompasses other natural resources as well. The property may be farm land, grazing land, forest land, a river, a fishery, wildlife or some other resource, including minerals. Each of these resources possesses particular physical qualities and technical constraints concerning their use, yet they fit into an integrated ecosystem.

The key message of this study is that secure access to tenure for the poor is essential to poverty reduction and the realisation of human rights. This assessment shows that natural resource tenure is inherently complex.Incomplete understanding, and ignorance or disregard for fundamental complexities, may lead to erroneous policy prescriptions and ultimately, to conflict about these resources.

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Sida

With Kenya’s growing population, farmers need to make farming more efficient and find new markets. Advisors are now giving them advice on new cultivation methods and new crops.

To increase growth and reduce poverty, farming must be modernized and become more productive. This is one of the Kenyan government’s priorities, and Sida has therefore helped to form the National Agriculture and Livestock Extension Programme (NALEP).

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http://www.sida.se

Sharing natural resources is often a source of conflict. That has been the case with the Okavango River, which flows through Angola, Namibia and Botswana. In a regional project funded by Sida, the river is being used as a tool to create a dialogue between the countries, with a focus on environmental and conflict management.

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http://www.sida.se

The impacts of climate change are felt around the world and the least developed countries are often the worst affected. There is today a broad acceptance of the need to reduce global CO2 emissions and to increase resilience to climate change. The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, Sida, is one of many agencies that seek to strengthen its capacity to respond to climate change challenges. Sida’s point of departure is to include climate change as part of competence development on environment as well as integrating climate change in tools and analysis for environmentally sustainable development. Sida views climate change as a sustainable development issue along with other environmental dimensions of sustainable development.

The report "Strengthening the capacity of donor agency staff to face the climate change challenge within the framework of environmentally sustainable development - mapping of donor agency training initiatives on climate change" focuses on strengthening staff capacity to deal with climate change and builds on a survey of a number of donor agencies training activities. The objective of the study was firstly to identify opportunities for sharing of training materials and exchanging experiences and the secondly to look for opportunities for joint training sessions. A questionnaire was sent out to eleven agencies. Respondents were also asked to share evaluations, training material and useful links and to report as fully as their time allowed. The report starts with a brief introduction to training events and how they fit within a broader framework to increase capacity for addressing climate change. It is followed by a summary of the answers to the questionnaire including examples of lessons learned. The report ends with a summary of observations from the survey and reflections on the opportunities for increased cooperation in line with the Paris declaration. Finally, several useful documents and websites are found in annex II.

Strengthening the Capacity

Effects on the environment have a great influence on economic and social development. It is not possible to dismiss the environmental issue as a “luxury problem”. Real development and poverty reduction can only be achieved if measures are also taken to safeguard natural resources and the environment.

This paper seeks the links between the issues of poverty and the environment. First it discusses the connections between the two issues, such as how the depletion of natural resources can cause poverty, and conversely, how poverty exacerbates environmental degradation.

Also covered are the environmental problems in rural areas (overgrazing, population growth, health problems), urban areas (transport-related pollution, dumping of hazardous waste), global environmental problems, and interventions that may help avert poverty and environmental degradation.

People who live in poverty are those exposed to the worst environmental and health risks. Overall, somewhere between 25% and 33% of the global burden of disease can be attributed to environmental factors. This proportion is larger in conditions of poverty, where more environmental hazards are present in the nearby living and working environment, and people have less capacity to protect themselves against exposure and effects of harmful or unpleasant pollutants.

Zimbabwe has always been plagued by droughts. Droughts are part of a general pattern of water scarcity, caused to some extent by unfavorable and fluctuating natural conditions and by an increasing population, but more importantly, by sub-optimal development and utilization of available resources.