Sub-Regional Strategic Opportunities Programme

IFAD prepared its first Sub-regional Strategy for the Pacific in 2004. Under the 2004 strategy, IFAD financed eleven regional and five country projects. It also welcomed four new members from the Pacific Islands. In 2014, an updated strategy was required as an instrument to plan and communicate with partners for continued expansion of IFAD regional and country-level investments in the Pacific. This strategy covers eleven IFAD member countries in the Pacific:  Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. While the total population is 2.2 million with 340,000 rural poor, the remoteness, vulnerability and levels of hardship justified IFAD support. 

At this regard, IFAD programme’s goal in the Pacific was to ensure that Governments and other partners were successfully expanding efforts that reduce poverty in rural areas using evidence, results and knowledge acquired through IFAD-financed investments. In particular, IFAD set strategic objectives were:

1. People in outer islands and remote areas produce, consume and market more local foods in environmentally sustainable ways.
2. Increase rural incomes from farm and non-farm income-generating and employment opportunities.
3. Focus on isolated areas facing hardship including atolls, outer islands and upland and marginal areas, which are prone to natural disaster and over-exploitation of natural resources.