There were no significant changes in 2019 to FTA’s theory of change1. FTA plans all its work on the basis of its operational priorities. These, in turn, focusresearch towards major development demands and knowledge gaps, orienting FTA towards the implementation of the SDGs and other global commitments.
In 2019 PIM completed the participatory priority-setting exercise started in 2018 to update the priorities for the program’s final 2019-2021 period. As a conclusion of this exercise, the framework of the Phase 2 proposal as well as the flagships’ impact pathways were reaffirmed as highly relevant.
Springs are the most important source of water for the people in the mid-hills of the Himalaya. Emerging evidence shows that they are increasingly drying up, causing numerous hardships for people, with those impacts being felt more acutely by women and members of vulnerable communities like lower castes (Dalits). Climate change, land-use and land cover changes, including haphazard infrastructure (hydropower, road construction), and other socio-economic changes such as urbanization and tourism are the leading causes of the drying up of springs.
For over a decade, rural Lao households have been undergoing a transformation from subsistence-oriented production systems to agricultural commercialization, facilitated by a series of Lao government policies opening the economy to international markets coupled with improved connectivity. The extent and depth of this process is accelerating, particularly in upland (non-paddy) farming systems that were formerly part of a swidden landscape.
The convergence of the biodiversity and climate crises, widening of wealth inequality, and most recently the COVID-19 pandemic underscore the urgent need to mobilize change to secure sustainable futures. Centres of tropical biodiversity are a major focus of conservation efforts, delivered in predominantly site-level interventions often incorporating alternative-livelihood provision or poverty-alleviation components. Yet, a focus on site-level intervention is ill-equipped to address the disproportionate role of (often distant) wealth in biodiversity collapse.
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