A financial agreement for a project costing  $5 million to recover from the disastrous floods that struck Pakistan, particularly Balochistan, in 2022, has been reached by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Government of Pakistan.

The partnership between FAO and the Balochistan Agricultural & Cooperatives Department marks the first time FAO has received money through a government in its capacity as a beneficiary of finance from the Asian Development Bank. The Economic Affairs Division (EAD) hosted the signing ceremony for the grant between the Government of Pakistan and ADB.

The initiative comes after ADB approved a $5 million grant to boost the country's food security, disaster and climate resilience, and offer emergency flood assistance. The Japan Fund for Prosperous and Resilient Asia and the Pacific (JFPR) is responsible for funding the ADB grant, which is a component of the $475 million Emergency Assistance Loan and $3 million Technical Assistance Grant authorised by ADB in December 2022.

The assistance is in response to the Government of Pakistan's request for support in its post-flood recovery and reconstruction efforts and is intended to aid in the restoration of irrigation, drainage, flood risk management, on-farm water management, and transportation infrastructure in the provinces of Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Sindh that were affected by the flooding.

The JFPR grant's additional funding broadens the scope of ADB's post-flood rehabilitation efforts, especially by assisting with the urgent distribution of climate-resilient seeds for staple crop cultivation, women-led livelihoods to meet basic household needs, and the incorporation of measures to increase community resilience to disasters brought on by natural hazards.

Through this project, FAO will make sure that 60,000 farm households receive rice seeds that are climate-adaptive for the upcoming Kharif sowing season in order to boost productivity in the four Balochistan districts that are most negatively impacted by the floods of 2022: Nasirabad, Jaffarabad, Usta-Mohammad, and Sohbatpur.

Around 30% of the target districts' total rice-growing area will be covered by the seeds. The FAO will also boost the livelihoods of women in agriculture by giving them sturdy toolkits for farming operations and safety footwear for rice transplanting. The initiative helps smallholder farmers plant for the upcoming Rabi season, building on FAO's quick reaction to the floods in Nasirabad division.

Additionally, it supports the commitment made by the director-general of FAO at the International Conference on Climate Resilient Pakistan in Geneva last January, when he promised that the FAO will continue to play a leading role in transforming Pakistan's agri-food systems to make them more efficient, inclusive, sustainable, and resilient, a challenge that has gained urgency following recent floods that have devastated the country's agricultural sector.

Credit: Independent News Pakistan-WealthPk