Farmers in El Salvador's Dry Corridor will benefit from a 35.8 million dollar grant to a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation project aimed at boosting their resilience to climate change, the Fao said on Thursday in a statement.
The Green Climate Fund, the main global fund to finance action to fight climate change agreed to give Fao the funds under an accord signed at the UN agency's headquarters in Rome, according to the statement.
Besides the Gcf grant, the project will receive $91.8 million from the Salvadoran Government and the Initiative for the Americas Fund, the statement said.
"This is the second fully-fledged agreement that Fao has signed with Gcf this month," said FAO Assistant Director-General for Programme Support and Technical Cooperation, Roberto Ridolfi.
"We want to build on this momentum to consolidate our joints efforts in dealing with climate change effects in the world and supporting the sustainable management of agriculture systems and natural resources," he added.
Over two million people live in poverty in El Salvador's Dry Corridor, an area that suffers severe droughts, floods, tropical storms, with more than a million depending on the production of staple grains as their main livelihood, Fao said.
Fao's five-year 127.7 million dollar Reclima project seeks to strengthen the resilience of smallholder farmers, who are often on the frontline of climate change impacts, by promoting climate adaptation measures such as the use of seeds that are tolerant to drought, the agency said.
Reclima aims to support 50,000 family farmers, who account for almost 15 percent of all family farmers in the country, through transforming their productive practices, improving their basic infrastructure and technical knowledge to build fully sustainable and resilient food systems.
The project is expected to benefit around 225,000 vulnerable people, including those from indigenous communities, said Fao.
Reclima also envisages improving agricultural extension systems and promoting a landscape approach to provide ecosystem services through the restoration of 17,000 hectares of degraded land.
Almost 4,000 families stand to benefit from better access to water through the capture, storage and distribution of rainwater, Fao said.
