The Project “Strengthening Qinghai Women Farmers’ Income Security and Resilience in a Changing Climate” officially launched, with the kick-off meeting being held in Xining, Qinghai Province on the 3rd of September. The three-year project is sponsored by UN Women and it builds on and will complement the “Qinghai Liupan Mountain Area Poverty Reduction Project (2015-2020)” implemented by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). The project will be implemented by the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy (CCAP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and UNEP-IEMP.

The project is designed to promote poverty reduction among women farmers by helping them become more economically resilient in a changing climate. It does so by improving and increasing their accessibility to climate-resilient and productive assets, finance, tool, technologies, capacities, and opportunities for moving up the value chain. The project directly addresses both China’s national poverty reduction goals as well as SDG global frameworks and principles for delivering gender equality and women’s economic empowerment in selected poverty-stricken counties in Qinghai Province. The geographic location of the project will be in 3 or 4 counties selected from the 7 IFAD project counties, and it is expected that approximately 40,000 women will benefit.

The representatives from UN Women, IFAD, and UNEP-IEMP, researchers from CCAP of CAS, and officials from the Qinghai Provincial Poverty Alleviation Bureau, Provincial Women Federation, Municipal Poverty Alleviation Bureaus of Xining and Haidong, and cadres from local township authorities and women federations participated in the kick-off meeting.

Mr. Yinhong Sun from IFAD chaired the kick-off meeting and he heard views and comments from the participants regarding the design and work plan of the project. Ms. Qing Wang from UN Women introduced the overall framework of the project. Dr. Linxiu Zhang, Director of UNEP-IEMP, deployed the labor division of the detailed project activities and provided technical guidance on the field visit to the project counties that was carried out after the kick-off meeting. The official responsible, from Qinghai Provincial Women Federation, welcomed the implementation of the project in Qinghai and expressed that the local authorities will provide full support and cooperation to all parties.

It was agreed upon by all participants that the project will empower the women in rural Qinghai from social and economic perspectives, and increase their access to productive and climate-resilient resources as well as build up their capacity to respond to climate change.