ICARDA
News
INTERNATIONAL
CENTER FOR AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH IN THE DRY AREAS
P.O. Box 5466, Aleppo, Syria
Phone: (963-21) 2213433, 2213477, 2225112, 2225012
Fax: (963-21) 2213490, 2225105; E-mail: ICARDA@CGIAR.ORG
25th
Anniversary of IFAD Provides Opportunity to Move
"Dryland Initiative for WANA" Forward
"Dryland Initiative for WANA" Forward
On this occasion, the President of IFAD also held a panel discussion on the theme "Achieving the Millennium Goals by Enabling the Rural Poor to Overcome their Poverty," moderated by Ms Eveline L. Herfkons, UN Secretary General's Executive Secretary for the Millennium Development Goals Campaign and former Minister for Development Cooperation of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. This was followed by four parallel roundtable discussions dealing with (i) Indigenous Peoples and Sustainable Development; (ii) Market Linkages for Rural Poor; (iii) Transferring Rural Institutions in Order to Reach the Millennium Development Goals; and (iv) Women as Agents of Change. The DG participated in the round table discussion on "Indigenous Peoples and Sustainable Development."
In the statements delivered by Heads of Delegations during Plenary Meetings, several developing-country representatives made a strong plea to their developed-country partners for increased development assistance and for keeping agriculture at the center of development financing. Voices were also raised for sustainable financing to the international agricultural research centers whose activities are primarily focused on work designed to resolve the multifaceted and region-specific constraints to agriculture.
The Director General Prof. Dr El-Beltagy and the Managing Director of Global Mechanism (GM) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), Dr Per Ryden, took the opportunity to organize a side-meeting on 20 February to discuss joint initiatives and ways and means to articulate the "Program on Sustainable Development in Rainfed Areas of West Asia and North Africa (WANA)," which had been developed at a meeting of all stakeholders at ICARDA in March 2002, following the directive of the Ministerial Meeting in Rabat in June 2001.
The WANA meeting was attended by heads of the delegations from Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman and Sudan, and senior representatives from several donor agencies, including the Arab Authority for Agricultural Investment and Development (AAAID), IFAD, and the Islamic Development Bank. The Director General of the OPEC fund, Dr Yesufu Seyyid Abdulai, attended the meeting, as did the Director General of ACSAD. Co-chairing the meeting, Prof. Dr Adel El-Beltagy thanked institutions and governments for their financial and technical support to the WANA Program, and highlighted the "catalytic" role of the GM-UNCCD in building partnerships and mobilizing resources. Some US$272,000 has already been pledged, but millions more are being sought "to make the initiative truly regional and truly effective,"Prof. Dr El-Beltagy said.
Dr Ryden, announced the sourcing of US$100,000 in support of two key objectives: (1) identification of priority activities, elaborated through "gap analysis and inventory" of national dryland programs, and (2) setting up a regional WANA Program Facilitation Unit.
ICARDA's (www.icarda.org) mission is to improve the welfare of people and alleviate poverty through research and training in dry areas of the developing world by increasing production, productivity, and nutritional quality of food, while preserving and enhancing the natural resource base. ICARDA is a Future Harvest Center.
