UNDP Vietnam funded 145 projects totaling $7.5 million since 1999 to help ethnic minorities. A project started in 2007 helped nearly 7,000 people in remote areas recover traditional occupations like farming insects, reducing poverty while protecting biodiversity. Community members now earn $4,300-7,600 annually on average. The project encouraged self-sustaining preservation of local heritage and biodiversity through workshops, demonstrations, and market studies. A report on policies and markets for cultivating an insect left a meaningful legacy for including traditional occupations in provincial development plans.

1. UN – UNDP
Vietnam
While ethnic minorities represent less than 15% of Viet Nam’s population, they make up almost 50%
of Viet Nam’s poor. Source: World Bank. Since its inception in 1999, the UNDP-backed GEF-SGP
programme in Viet Nam funded 145 projects, amounting to US$ 7.5 million.
Started in 2007, the project helped nearly 7,000 ethnic people in poor and remote areas of the
country recover and develop their traditional occupations. This contributed to the preservation of
indigenous knowledge and the creation of sustainable livelihoods.
In addition to reducing poverty, the project has contributed to the protection of biodiversity,
replanting forests to host the insects and documenting breeding technologies to improve productivity
and share knowledge with other communities.
Luong Thanh Binh, a community technician trained by the project, says: “I have been providing
guidance and sharing experience on how to cultivate Kerria Lacca for people not only in Muong Lat
but also in other districts of Thanh Hoa province.”
By organizing experience-sharing workshops, visits to demonstration models and studies of
processing and consumption markets, the project encourages a self-sustaining method of preserving
local heritage and biodiversity in and beyond the region. The project’s report on policy and markets
for cultivating Kerria Lacca in the Thanh Hoa province leaves a meaningful legacy for the inclusion
of traditional occupations in the province’s official policy on forestry economic development in
mountain districts.
Like Xuan’s family, more than 900 ethnic minority households in the district have escaped poverty
through a UNDP-backed project. With funding from the Global Environment Facility Small Grant
Programme (GEF-SGP), Dao, Kho Mu, Mong and Thai ethnic households in the region recovered a
lost tradition of farming insects and now earn VND90-160 million (USD4,300-7,600) per year on
average.
World Without Poverty – partners with the UN & WB
Brazil
The starting point and inspiration for this effort is the most successful Brazilian program of all time:
Bolsa Familia, which in its decade of implementation has managed to reduce poverty by half in Brazil
(from 9.7% to 4.3%), thanks to its broad scope and coverage – some 50 million low-income Brazilians,
or a quarter of the total population.
Unlike subsidies and other general social programs, Bolsa Familia is a conditional cash transfer program
through which parents receive a fixed monthly stipend (in this case R$70, about $ 30) in exchange for
sending their children to school and complying with different health checkups.
Although 1.7 million beneficiaries have “graduated,” in other words, have left the program, critics warn
that many may become dependent on this system. They believe that Bolsa Familia is important for
alleviating hunger and strengthening social empowerment but that the greatest challenge is to provide
employment opportunities and basic services to that population. This is precisely the focus of the

2. government’s ambitious anti-poverty program, Brasil Sem Miseria, which promises to help millions of
Brazilians escape extreme poverty.
WWF – Thailand, Mekong River
No river on Earth can compare with the Mekong when it comes to the amount of fish caught. The
Mekong river basin, which spans Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and China’s Yunnan
province, accounts for a quarter of the world’s freshwater fish catch. Fishing provides a vital source of
food and income for over 60 million people in the region, and fish typically makes up about 80% of the
protein household diets.
But overfishing has caused fish populations and catches to fall. Several fish species that are important for
food are now listed as endangered, including species unique to the Mekong like the Jullien’s golden carp
and the thick-lipped barb.
Other species are also threatened by being accidentally caught in fishing gear. These include the
Irrawaddy river dolphin and the Mekong giant catfish, the world’s largest freshwater fish.
In response, we’ve been working with local communities in Laos, Cambodia and Thailand to set up fish
conservation areas. These are small stretches of river where no fishing is allowed, providing a refuge for
fish to spawn and grow. That helps fish populations to recover, which in turn improves the food security
and livelihoods of local people.
We’ve been providing support to help communities set up and manage conservation areas, including
patrolling for illegal fishing. We’ve also been working with local people to monitor their success – which
is crucial for building support from governments and development agencies, as well the communities
themselves.
Today, there are more than 1,000 of these community-run fish conservation zones in Laos alone. Local
people tell us that they catch more fish more easily near the conservation areas, and we’re collecting data
to back this up.
It is important to promote sustainable farming and fishing because overfishing means that food sources
become scares. By sustainably monitoring and protecting fish it ensures that the supply grows and that
fishing areas are monitored and preserved to ensure that fishing is easily accessible and that native fish
don’t migrate elsewhere.
.