BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 1. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) is implementing a Global Environment Facility (GEF) project "Facilitating agrobiodiversity (ABD) conservation and sustainable use to promote food and nutritional resilience in Tajikistan," a source in FAO Representation in Tajikistan told Trend.
"Activities started on 30 August 2022 with a workshop in Dushanbe at which relevant partners discussed the main project tasks, activities, and expected results planned for 2022–2023", the FAO office in Tajikistan said.
The main goals of this project are to strengthen local capacities to support long-term plans and actions for agrobiodiversity conservation and sustainable use, developing strategies for evaluating traditional knowledge, and supporting continuous adaptation to climate change.
"It is expected that 2370 local farmers (50 percent of women and 50 percent of men) will receive capacity-building education courses, microloans (for women), and technical support (i.e., seeds, tools for more resilient agrobiodiversity conservation and sustainable use)," the source in FAO said.
This project's top priorities until the end of this year are to:
- Organize an inception workshop with the participation of key national stakeholders;
- Establish of National Project Steering Committee comprising key state responsible agencies;
- Launch of the survey, assessment, screening, mapping and data collection on agrobiodiversity from the project target areas.
Remarkably, the project, which is due to end in 2025, is funded by the Governement of Tajikistan in the amount of $12,400,000 and from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) - $1,776,484.