IDDP Priority Areas
The Integrated Drylands Development Programme has been successfully launched
in 19 countries. Efforts will be made to secure funds to permit its expansion
into areas of Asia and Latin America and its further expansion in Africa and
the Arab States.
As the programme proceeds, a number of priority areas are emerging that require special attention.
Land Tenure
The terms under which people are able to use land and water influence how much effort and investment it is worth putting into growing crops. Land tenure systems in the drylands are often complex and confused, and poor people seldom have confidence in their rights to remain on the land that they farm. Land and water rights are particularly important for nomadic pastoralists whose traditional rights to traverse land and graze their livestock often come into conflict with "modern" systems of fixed rights for sedentary farmers.
Land tenure issues are often highly sensitive and politicized, and donors often find it difficult to intervene in land reform programmes. UNDP has a unique role to play in land reform due to its political independence and its ability to work with a range of stakeholders. It can help donors by creating "baskets" of funds for land reform. Through its Integrated Drylands Development Programme UNDP's Drylands Development Centre is establishing a community of practitioners in land reform in Africa who can be called upon to debate land reform issues and offer practical solutions to problems. The Centre has also helped SADC to design a Regional Technical Land Reform Facility.
Markets
Dryland communities are poorly served by markets. They are unable to buy agricultural inputs and are unable to sell their produce. There is little incentive to invest in agriculture or pastoralism. Past efforts at stimulating markets have often not worked because of a failure to deal in an integrated fashion with all of the elements that must come together: government investment in infrastructure; incentives for the private sector; capacity strengthening for the users of markets. UNDP's Drylands Development Centre is expanding its Integrated Drylands Development Programme into issues of marketing, building on UNDP's strengths in encouraging partnerships between the local private sector and local government, and in strengthening the capacities of market users' associations and farmers groups.
Disaster Management
People who live in dry areas are vulnerable to disasters of various kinds. They are subject to recurrent droughts, and when the rains come are often affected by serious floods. In the past, crisis preparedness and management often focused on man-made disasters and acute natural disasters. Recurrent exposure to natural hazards, especially drought, has been largely ignored. This is changing, and UNDP's Drylands Development Centre is helping the change to come about. The Centre works closely with UNDP's Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery. The Centre has contributed to the current volume of the World Vulnerability Report which identifies drought as a major cause of crisis. The Centre is also represented on the Ad hoc Drought Committee of the International Secretariat for Disaster Reduction which is helping the UN system worldwide to develop common policies on drought. The Integrated Drylands Development Programme helps countries to draw up and implement strategies that prepare for the effects of drought and help to mitigate its effects.
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