This document discusses strategies for reducing poverty and malnutrition among vulnerable groups. It makes three key points: 1) Poverty and malnutrition are intrinsically linked, as extreme poverty determines limited access to income, health services, and infrastructure. The poorest groups are often the last to benefit from universal policies. 2) Agriculture and food systems can play an important role in accelerating poverty reduction, but need to be designed with the poor in mind. Targeting specific actions at the poor is more expensive but necessary to ensure they are not left behind. 3) Reaching the extreme poor requires comprehensive approaches, including social assistance programs, livelihood support, and ensuring agricultural policies promote poverty reduction and decent work opportunities.

1. Identifying and reaching
vulnerable groups
Maya Takagi
FAO
Session A: Leaving No One Behind
28-30 November 2018

2. Key Messages for Leaving No One behind:
Inclusive Acceleration
• Poverty and Malnutrition are intrinsically linked
• Poorest of the poor tend to be the last ones to be included, even
in universal policies
• Unless we take specific action, poorer and most vulnerable will
continue to be left behind
• Agriculture and food systems have a key role for acceleration of
poverty reduction – needs to be pro-poor

3. Poverty and Malnutrition are intrinsically linked:
• Extreme poverty is a key determinant of hunger and nutritional
status linked to minimal or inadequate access to income,
essential health services, basic infrastructure (utilization)
• Most dimensions of FSN show wide disparities/inequalities
between wealthier and poorer countries, as well as within
countries, between urban/rural, within regions, and by income,
gender, age and ethnicity.
• Indigenous peoples tend to be poorer and mostly affected by
discrimination, violence, assimilation policies in the education
and health systems, and the dispossession of land and denial of
land rights.

4. Poorer children more likely to be stunted

5. Some considerations
• Wealthier households usually capture public services--universal
service systems are inherently pro rich unless specifically pro
poor; universal strategies need to be focused on the poor
• Focusing on the poor is more expensive and harder
• Address demand side constraints
• This means targeting—and targeting works
• Redistributive justice—in income and assets (returns to labor,
land and livestock) is the trickiest
• Data and analysis—plenty on some aspects of inequality, less on
others

6. Poorer children ultimately benefit less

7. 3
Taxation and public spending can reduce inequality

8. Who are the (rural) extreme poor
today?• There are still 736 million extreme poor people - 10%
of global population (using the $1.90 a day poverty
line)
• About 80% live in rural areas and 40% of live in forest and
savannahs (SOFO 2018)
• They live in different agro-ecological and population
density contexts
• They are often not ‘smallholders’ but landless, wage
workers, forest dependent
• Most of them engage in agriculture, but not only –
they diversify due to seasonality, work conditions,
income levels of agriculture
• Most of them live in sub-Saharan Africa
• The ‘double bottom’
• Institutional fragility and conflict trap them in poverty

9. What have we learned in reducing
(rural) extreme poverty?
It first requires broad-based interventions
• a country’s priority – from political leadership to all sectors of
society:
– clear policy direction and adequate means of implementation
– effective and democratic institutions
– incentives for multi-sectoral coordination
– monitoring and evaluating progress
• stimulating pro-poor economic growth and income generation
opportunities – the role of equality of resources
• minimum set of investments (in rural areas): infrastructure, basic
services, education, health …

10. What have we learned in reducing
(rural) extreme poverty?
but reaching the extreme poor requires dedicated effort and comprehensive
approaches
• social assistance – cash transfers and other instruments – right to food
• double inclusion (social protection and economic/productive inclusion)
schemes - linking cash transfers with other types of support: livelihoods
interventions, microfinance, skills building, nutrition interventions
• articulate agricultural policies with poverty eradication and decent work
promotion strategies (non-ag) – seasonality of agricultural work
• fostering environmentally sustainable livelihoods: governance of tenure and
preserve or revitalize natural resources
• enhance preparedness, build resilience, as well as restore the livelihoods of
people who have been affected by conflict or climate-related shocks - famine,
earthquakes and extreme weather events
NUTRITIONSENSITIVE

11. Unless we take specific action, poorer and most
vulnerable will continue to be left behind
• Some key points for discussion:
• Transformation of food systems will have a key role in the evolution of
all dimensions of FSN— how can food systems be inclusive and address
FSN of poorest and most vulnerable?
• Targeting is key – and also intersectoral coordination
• Innovation has been highlighted as an important “accelerator” for FSN—
how do we make sure that there are incentives for innovation that
benefits (and does not harm) the poorest and most vulnerable?
• Support to different forms of local collective action is important means
of empowering poorest and most vulnerable communities, in order to
strengthen voice in political, economic and policy processes, but often is
neglected.

12. THANK YOU!!
maya.takagi@fao.org;
spl3@fao.org
http://www.fao.org/reduce-rural-poverty/en/
This is the name of the Conference 1218 May 2015