Enhancing the resilience and sustainability of Lebanon's agricultural sector

This paper presented an overview of the most important factors that affect agricultural development and food security in the Arab region, especially those related to water and land conservation, and to climate change impact. The paper also included a conceptual framework on resilience and sustainability, and a guide for following up and evaluating the state of sustainability in the Arab agricultural sector. It also addressed the main requirements for enhancing the resilience and sustainability of agriculture in the Arab region.

This paper presented the context of the agricultural sector in Palestine, Jordan and Lebanon and the challenges faced by rural agricultural communities in these countries, mainly climate change, decline in areas of agricultural lands and water scarcity. Additionally, the paper addressed vulnerabilities of rural agricultural communities in the three countries and presented a number of proposed measures to enhance the resilience of the rural agricultural communities in each country.

Given the water scarcity problem in the Arab region, this paper focused on the high potential of rainfed agriculture to improve production and productivity levels in several countries of the Arab region. The paper also presented agricultural strategies and practices that allow improving water and land productivity in rainfed agriculture through adopting rainwater harvesting, supplemental irrigation, conservation agriculture, genetic improvement, integrated disease and weed control, among other good practices. Additionally, the paper noted the need to increase investment, capacity building and research in rainfed agriculture.

During this session a brief introduction to the agriculture sector in Egypt was presented, in addition to efforts made in agricultural development and main risks and challenges facing the sector and its sustainability, especially in relation to water and land resources and climate change impacts. The presentation also covered main interventions and trends towards enhancing resilience and sustainability of the agricultural sector in Egypt.

The session included an overview of the following projects:

• UN-habitat project on increasing the resilience of both displaced persons and host communities to climate change-related water challenges in Jordan and Lebanon in partnership with UNESCWA and others,
• UNESCWA project on enhancing the resilience and sustainability of the agricultural sector and its related capacity-building activities implemented in Lebanon
• Livelihood improvement project in Darfur State in Sudan aiming at enhancing food security, increasing income, and building the resilience of poor rural families to shocks

Participants were separated into three working groups, and each group was assigned to study one dimension of enhancing the resilience and sustainability of the agricultural sector, as follows:

• Socio-economic dimension
• Environmental dimension and climate change
• Women and youth empowerment

For each dimension, participants were specifically requested to identify the main challenges facing the agricultural sector in Lebanon, and to propose for each challenge a number of solutions and indicators to measure improvement.