Zambian President Edgar Lungu said the Zambia Integrated Forest Landscape Project’s innovation would go a long way in enhancing food security and livelihoods and helping the country to achieve its goals of mitigating climate change in line with international commitments to climate change.
The Zambian leader was speaking when, according to a release from the Ministry of National Development Planning, he visited a cashew nut farm in eastern Zambia’s Petauke district, one of the project’s initiatives.
The farm is practising climate-smart agriculture techniques taught by the project supported by the World Bank.
He said the innovation will improve food security and livelihoods in rural communities while achieving climate change mitigation objectives.
The Zambian leader hoped that more farmers would adopt climate-smart agriculture techniques to promote the production of high-value crops.
National Project Coordinator Tasila Banda commended the Zambian government for its commitment to combat climate change through interventions being implemented by the project.
“As an integrated project, the only way to keep these interventions sustainable is to engage the private sector who are helping communities to generate bankable project proposals for enterprises around agriculture value chain, non-timber forest value and eco-tourism,” she said.
The Zambia Integrated Forest Landscape Project is an initiative of the government through a loan facility from the World Bank at a total cost of 32.8 million U.S. dollars.
It is meant to support rural communities in the eastern part of the country to allow them to better manage the resources of their landscape to reduce deforestation, improved landscape management, and increase environmental and economic benefits
