Project: Addressing the Environmental and Social Effects Associated With Export-led Agricultural Development
Duration: July 2007 to December 2008
Export-oriented agriculture can reduce poverty, but it tends to create difficult tradeoffs with other objectives. It does not directly benefit the poorest people in rural areas; favors those with existing access to land, capital, and technology; can displace small-scale producers through heightened conflict over natural resources; and can worsen environmental problems from deforestation to water pollution.
Building on the approach developed by WWF MPO through its From Negotiations to Adjustment project, this new project seeks to identify and address these tradeoffs at a local level; trace them back to relevant institutional and policy factors at the national level; and support the development of analysis, institutional capacity, stakeholder platforms, and direct interventions that can help to resolve them.
The overall goals are to help more of the economic and environmental benefits associated with agricultural development to reach small producers; and to ensure that specific environmental and social issues related to the expansion of export agriculture are addressed more directly and proactively through the broader participation of stakeholders in policy, planning, and governance processes.
Project activities have begun at specific sites in four countries - Cambodia and Laos, in Southeast Asia; and Zambia and Malawi, in Southern Africa. Between 60 and 70 percent of the population in each country depends fully or partly on agricultural livelihoods. As these countries continue to develop, however, they are experiencing greater challenges related to increased pressure on valuable natural resources and tension between a diverse set of policy and governance goals.
Though the project will be organized at a country level, building on WWF’s strong partnerships with governments and communities, it has also been bundled into two regions as a way to promote regional dialogue, cross-country synergies, and a strategic approach to the key drivers (both issues and institutions) of change.
