ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and the International Fund for Agriculture Development (Ifad) have signed an agreement to help increase agriculture incomes of at least 100,000 rural households in Gilgit-Baltistan and employment opportunities for them.

The government is co-financing the $120 million initiative with $23.63m and will lead the programme, while the remaining amount is being provided by Ifad to finance the Economic Transformation Initiative in the region.

An official of the Ministry of Climate Change said on Wednesday that over 90 per cent of the population in the region was engaged in the agriculture sector, growing crops on small landholdings.

The initiative will focus on increasing agricultural production, introducing high-value cash crops and linking farmers to markets. It will also improve the infrastructure, such as the irrigation systems and roads.

“Pakistan is a country with a large population of young people. Over 55pc are below the age of 25. Increasing incomes and creating economic opportunity for rural communities and especially young people is essential for effective rural transformation,” Hoonae Kim, Ifad’s Director for Asia and the Pacific region, said in a statement.

Poverty in remote rural areas is largely because of small per capita landholdings (0.6–0.8 acres), poor access to markets, lack of access to credit, inputs and support services, limited off-farm employment opportunities, and policy and institutional constraints.

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The spokesperson for the climate change ministry, Mohammad Saleem, explained how growing intensity and frequency in climate change impacts posed risks to the sustainability of agriculture sector, which had suffered damage from recent floods and torrential rains.

“Shrinking river flows, depleting groundwater availability is adding more to the impact,” he said. “Higher temperatures reduce yields of crops and encourage weed and pest proliferation. Changes in precipitation patterns increase the likelihood of short-run crop failures and long-run production declines.”

The spokesperson said millions of farmers had already lost their livelihoods and others were abandoning farming and switching over to alternative means of livelihoods in urban areas. If this trend continued, food security could become a problem, he cautioned.

Farmers in Gilgit-Baltistan are in the grip of severe impacts of climate change in the shape of rising temperatures, flash floods, erratic and shifting rain patterns.

Published in Dawn, September 24th, 2015

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