Honduras: Women Run a Nursery, Learn About Climate Change

Doña Esperanza waters some of the 28 species of plantlets grown in El Pacifico Nursery. (Copyright: WFP/Hetze Tosta)

Single Honduran mothers receive assistance from the Honduran authorities and the WFP to maintain this nursery that they have as a result to generate the economic resources to maintain their families and protect the environment.

“We are pleased with this project because it will improve the lives of our families and communities,” says Neptali Amador, Marcovia City Council Member.

“El Pacifico,” a nursery with an area of 1,500 square metres and the capacity to hold more than 1.5 million plantlets, is located in the department of Choluteca, an area with high food insecurity rates.

This nursery aims to ensure food security for 650 families (more than 3,200 people) where single mothers who have limited economic resources and who are the heads of their households, as well as elderly people are in charge of caring for a nursery, which includes watering and planting of seedlings and performing other subsequent reforestation processes. The programme offers them technical assistance, training, equipment and other supplies.

The production of over 384,000 plantlets (per three-month turn) offers many benefits for the communities: reforestation, forest protection, soil conservation, recovery of water sources, protection of vulnerable areas, diversification of agroforestry products (fruit trees, firewood, timber species) for vulnerable households, and proper soil conservation.

The “Agroforestry and Adaptation to Climate Change” Program is a strategic alliance between the National Forest Conservation Institute (ICF), The Mayor of Marcovia’s Office and the World Food Program, where the beneficiaries take part of WFP´s “food-for-assets” program.

WFP’s Food for Assets projects (also known as Food for Work) pay workers with food to start building a hunger-free future for their communities.

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For the hungry, every day is about finding enough food to survive: poor farmers cannot afford to risk experimenting with new agricultural methods, when they can barely subsist on a small patch of land. The unemployed don’t have a chance to learn new skills if they spend all day scraping a living on the black market. Poverty-stricken communities hit by floods or droughts are too busy looking for food to rebuild infrastructure vital for redevelopment.

Providing food in exchange for work makes it possible for the poor and hungry to devote time and energy to taking the first steps out of the hunger trap. This is the goal of WFP’s food-for-assets projects.

Community members are given food in exchange for work on vital new infrastructure or for time spent learning new skills that will increase the food security of households or communities.

Projects include:

• Irrigation, terracing, soil and water conservation. In countries where drought regularly causes food shortages, irrigation can boost crop yields by 100-400%.
• In war-torn countries, WFP offers food assistance as an incentive for ex-combatants to abandon weapons and learn new skills, which are vital to smooth their path back into society.
• Poverty often forces farmers to overuse soil and grazing land. The result is barren land and accelerating desertification. WFP provides food rations to farmers who practice soil conservation by planting trees.
• To help communities develop, WFP sometimes helps people in villages to build new schools. They receive food, so they can devote time to the building work without worry about losing income.
• WFP helps people set up home gardening businesses by giving them food assistance as they train. This means later they have a livelihood with which to support themselves.

The International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) in partnership with the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) and the ASB Partnership for the Forest Tropical Margins at the World Agroforestry centre (ASB-ICRAF) will hold a panel discussion based on recent findings from a study on private sector engagement in REDD+.

Come to the session to learn:

• In the REDD+ supply chain, who are the private sector players and what are their motivations and types of interventions?
• What are the current challenges for private sector engagement in REDD+?
• How can private sector engagement in REDD+ be enhanced?

Speaker from the World Agroforestry Centre: Ms. Florence Bernard

See Brief: The Role of the Private Sector in Climate Change Interventions

Story from the event: Tony La Viña: Landscape approach is a stronger signal to REDD+

According to Tony La Viña, a REDD+ facilitator at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties (UNFCCC COP 18) talks, a landscape approach holds potential to unlock ambiguities and uncertainties that threaten to stall implementation and scaling up of the REDD+ (Reducing emissions form Deforestation and Forest Degradation) mechanism. Read more