ARIJ has become a Palestinian Centre of excellence in the fields of agricultural, environmental, water and land use research. The institute promotes sustainable development and the self-reliance of the Palestinian people through greater control over their natural resources. The Institute seeks to improve the local stock of scientific and technical knowledge and to introduce and devise more efficient methods of resource utilisation and conservation, improved practices, and appropriate technology.  SDC supported ARIJ projects since 1996, since 2000 SDC provides a core funding contribution to ARIJ. During 2006 ARIJ worked on producing a new comprehensive report on the Status of the Environment in Gaza and West Bank following its first report produced in 1996. ARIJ has also worked closely with UNEP to build capacity and provide expertise for a comprehensive environmental survey on the evacuated settlement areas of the Gaza strip.

Budget: 0.357 Mio CHF
Phase: <>01/01/2009 – 31/12/2009
Website: www.arij.org 

Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistic (PCBS)

Training of field workers on Farm Holdings Survey/ PCBS

PCBS donors consisting of NORAD, Dutch Cooperation, European Commission, DFID, World Bank (IBRD) and SDC formed a core funding group (CFG) to support PCBS programme for the past 3 years. The decision to fund the new 3-year programme (2006 – 2008) is a clear continuation of SDCs longstanding involvement with PCBS. The current focus of SDC is to safeguard PCBS indispensable work at the same time PCBS, SDC and like-minded donors would continue to build PCBS as a financially and technically sustainable institution. PCBS has shown interest and has done some preliminary work in the Palestinian context to address the international objectives of national statistics offices in relation to human rights and good governance. The Millennium Development Goals, MDGs, are of a cross cutting interest and all the PCBS directorates are expected to provide statistical data about the indicators under the eight goals. The biggest single undertaking of PCBS during the current phase is the 2007 population and housing census to release its data by mid 2008.

Budget: 1,313 Mio CHF
Phase: 01/01/2009 – 31/12/2011
Website: www.pcbs.gov.ps