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Harnessing trade for poverty reduction and climate
change adaptation
With about 40 million undernourished people, food
security is already one of the main challenges in the
Eastern African Community. In the next decades, the
situation is expected to further aggravate as
climate change worsens in a region were as much as four
East Africans in five rely on agriculture for their
living. If Sub-Saharan Africa is not to become the home
of an additional 600 million hungry people, early action
and adaptation of sound policies harnessing the
potential role of trade is a must. Over the next three
years, CUTS International Geneva and its partners
throughout the region will kick-start this process
through a project entitled “Promoting
Agriculture-Climate-Trade linkages in the Eastern
African Community” (PACT EAC).
PACT EAC consists of two separate but synergetic
segments for human and institutional capacity building
of East African Community (EAC) stakeholders to take
better advantage of international trade for their growth
and development and poverty reduction, particularly in
the context of climate change. The two segments focus on
issues related to trade-climate change-food security
linkages and WTO discussions/negotiations respectively.
Through research-based advocacy and networking and by
linking grassroots with Geneva, the project will assist
EAC stakeholders in better understanding and dealing
with the critical challenges of climate change, food
security and effective participation in the multilateral
trading system.
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 PACT
EAC: An Introduction
English
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French
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The first segment will aim to fill the existing gaps in
awareness, knowledge, understanding and policy-making
and implementation capacity in the EAC to effectively
deal with the interface of climate change-food
security-trade. This will be achieved through building
capacity of all stakeholders (relevant government
ministries and agencies, civil society, farmers and the
private sector) for designing and implementing holistic
and inter-related policies in the areas of trade, food
security and climate change
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Research |
Advocacy and Networking |
Training |
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Teams of researchers from the region will undertake
six research studies on topics identified by field
actors. One will focus on trade policy and politics
and its relationship with climate change and food
security issues in the EAC |
Six multi-stakeholder networks will spread the word
about the way forward as identified by the research
teams. Regular releases of advocacy materials, as
well as regular organization of events, will support
this effort. |
In order to build the technical capacity of a
critical mass of stakeholders, national and regional
training workshops will be organized in
collaboration with local partners. Training
materials developed by external experts will make
use of research findings |
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The second segment of the PACT EAC will establish a
bi-monthly EAC Assistance Forum in Geneva that will seek
to address the expressed need of the WTO negotiators of
the EAC countries for supporting their Geneva Missions
in the WTO discussions and negotiations by providing
them a package of services and technical material. This
segment proposes to take advantage of the
complementarity of the needs of Geneva Missions of the
EAC countries and the proven strengths of CUTS
International Geneva by establishing a durable and
effective support mechanism for EAC countries in Geneva
with links to the grassroots. |
