agriculture

The Moldova Agriculture Competitiveness Project aims to enhance the competitiveness of the agro-food sector by modernizing the food safety management system, facilitating market access for farmers, and mainstreaming sustainable land management practices. The project focuses on enhancing land productivity through soil conservation and rehabilitation of anti-erosion shelterbelts to promote agro-environmental sustainability.

The project aims to increase preparedness against food insecurity and improve the resilience of food systems in participating countries. It will finance sub-projects, including scaling up delivery of climate smart agriculture technologies such as re-afforestation and restoring degraded water catchment areas through tree planting.

Investments will include a variety of green infrastructure measures, sustainable and climate-smart agricultural practices, and livelihoods diversification. Green infrastructure will be designed in conjunction with gray infrastructure to optimize the functionality, cost-effectiveness, and resilience of the integrated natural and built system.

The project used farmer-led natural regeneration, which is mostly to create food forests, but also improve forest cover to reduce water runoff and maximizing rain infiltration (and protection from wind).

The project will support watershed management planning and watershed restoration to reduce risk of landslide and floods.

The project uses greening and bio-engineering approaches to restoring roads and making them climate resilient

The project financed a cash-for-trees program which part of an erosion prevention activity that provided incentives for smallholders to reforest their lands in the watersheds surrounding the irrigated areas.

The measures to be integrated in the designs of bridges, roads and river crossings include bioengineering solutions for landslide and erosion protection, drainage systems, and so on. The resilience mainstreaming applies to the entire road under the upgradation works contract, as the road alignment falls in the midst of the Himalayan mountains. The bioengineering solutions and drainage improvement in slide risk locations apply to the roads under maintenance as well.

The project interventions will introduce the integrated watershed and landscape management approach, and facilitate the adoption of sustainable land and water management techniques and practices. The proposed interventions will increase the overall resilience of the communities to climate-related shocks. The project will have land-management options that enhance carbon sequestration and, concurrently, prevent erosion and land degradation.

The project focuses mostly on the use of terracing and protection of natural areas to reduce land degradation and provision associated benefits, such as flood risk reduction, erion control.