ISLAMABAD: The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has signed a $5 million funding agreement with the government to aid the nation’s recovery from the devastating floods that occurred in 2022, particularly in the provinces of Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Sindh.
This marks the first time that FAO has received funds through a government as a recipient of funding from the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The grant signing ceremony was held at the Economic Affairs Division (EAD) between the government and ADB, with the federal secretary for economic affairs and executive director of Japan to ADB present at the event.
The ADB approved a $5 million grant to provide emergency flood assistance, strengthen the country’s disaster and climate resilience, and support food security.
The grant was financed by the Japan Fund for Prosperous and Resilient Asia and the Pacific (JFPR) and is part of the larger $475 million Emergency Assistance Loan (EAL) and $3 million technical assistance grant approved by ADB in December.
Through this project, FAO will provide climate-adaptive rice seeds to 60,000 farm households in four Balochistan districts that were most affected by the 2022 floods. The seeds will be sown over approximately 30 percent of the total rice cropping area of the target districts.
FAO will also support women’s livelihoods in agriculture by providing them with durable farming toolkits for facilitating farming activities and protective footwear for safer rice transplanting.
The project builds on FAO’s immediate response to the floods in the Nasirabad division by supporting smallholder farmers in planting for the Rabi season.
It also reinforces the FAO director general’s pledge at the International Conference on Climate Resilient Pakistan in January, in which he ensured that FAO would continue to play a leading role in transforming Pakistan’s agri-food systems to make them more efficient, inclusive, sustainable, and resilient.
