Message-ID: <adeb3d24000210040875@[132.203.21.30]> Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 11:56:34 -0500 From: Jean-Charles Le Vallee <mailto:aaa183@AGORA.ULAVAL.CA> Subject: World Food Summit discussion group To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
QUESTIONS FOR THE NORTH AMERICAN WORLD FOOD SUMMIT FORUM To subscribe and participate, write to mailto:fao50@grr.ulaval.caHello all! You will find hereafter a series of questions as well as the objectives and actions as proposed for each of the themes (or commitment areas) covered by the North American position paper which will serve as the basis for the debate.
To participate in the debate, simply respond stating the number of the question. This way, each of us will contribute his/her ideas which we can share and discuss. Remember, all these ideas will be included in a paper to be presented at the Michigan meeting! I hope you will all participate in great numbers! We have five days, until the 21st of June to receive your ideas.
In all, there are 8 themes covered by the debate. The first six cover the joint Canadian American paper. The 7th question concerns the overall strategy and the 8th, objectives that have not been adressed by the paper.
We invite you to read upon on each of the objectives and proposed actions, as can be found in the North American position paper. When answering, you may state the number of the commitment area to which you are responding. This synthesis does not reflect the full richness of the paper, we would like to encourage you to read the full paper. You may get a copy at our website at http://fao50.fsaa.ulaval.ca/
If you have any questions do not hesitate to write as well. Nous vous invitons a participer en francais. Les invitamos a participar en espanol! We look very much forward to your participation and ideas!!!
Best regards, Jean-Charles Le Vallee for the Forum team.
This message has been cross-posted to multiple discussion lists. We apologize to readers who have seen it more than once. Feel free to cross this message to RELEVANT lists (please let me know about other lists of interest). Si vous avez des questions, n'hesitez pas a m'ecrire! Si tienen preguntas, no duden en comunicar conmigo!
The Questions
1-6. For each of the six areas: - Does the paper articulate a clear and consistent strategy to attain the objectives? - What should be the key elements of such a strategy? - Are the funding priorities of U.S. and Canadian development assistance consistent with such a strategy? - Are there major external factors, such as changes in domestic agricultural support policies, that hinder or help the attainment of these goals?
7. The overall strategy. - Is there a consistent strategy articulated in the paper that will help achieve the 6 objectives simultaneously? - What should be the key elements of such a strategy? - Are the funding priorities of U.S. and Canadian development assistance consistent with such an overall strategy? - Are there major external factors, such as changes in domestic agricultural support policies, that hinder or help the attainment of these goals?
8. Have all the objectives been adressed? - Are there major objectives that are central to achieving food security that the paper does not address? - What are these areas? - What should be the strategies for addressing these areas?
The Commitment Areas
The joint Canadian-U.S. paper lays out a set of objectives in each of the 6 following commitment areas:
1. Creating an enabling economic, political, and social environment for food security, 2. Enhancing sustainable domestic food system capacity, 3. Implementing freer international trade, 4. Improving access to food for food insecure groups, including on an emergency basis, 5. Mobilizing more effective international efforts to supplement and reinforce national commitments, 6. Monitoring and follow-up.
1. Creating an Enabling Economic, Political, and Social Environment
Objectives
a) Open and stable political environment, with peace and stability internally and externally.
b) Pro-growth-with-equity economic environment that ensures more equitable distributions of income and social conditions.
c) Increased urban and rural employment and enhanced ability of the poor to purchase food and/or increase food production through development of the agricultural sector.
d) Sustainability as a fundamental basis for development.
e) Equal access for men and women.
Actions to be taken
a) Promote democratic forms of government based on the principles of accountability and transparency in public institutions and the rule of law.
b) Adopt economic policies that:
(1) Pursue national budgets that balance public sector expenditures with revenues. (2) Support a foreign exchange system that seeks and maintains an equilibrium level through open market forces. (3) Pursue trade liberalization within the context of the multilateral trading system. (4) Ensure that rights to land ownership and transfer and its produce areä effective and non-discriminatory. (5) Promote a level playing field so that all participants, men and women, interact on a neutral ground with a legal, regulatory, judicial and policy framework that ensures that private markets operate competitively. (6) Explicitly endorse principles of sustainability.
c) Plan and implement strategies, based on analysis of underlying causes, extent, and locations of food insecurity, that establish explicit food security goals, priorities for action (sequencing activities when appropriate), and accountable andä measurable results.
d) Strengthen natural resource and forest conservation policies and practices to ensure that the natural resource base upon which agriculture depends is sustainable.
e) Promote gender equality, improve health environments, and stabilize population.
f) Develop regional conflict prevention and resolution mechanisms.
2. Enhancing Sustainable Domestic Food System Capacity.
Objectives
a) Continuously improved science-based environmentally, socially, politically and economically sustainable technologies and practices, adapted to farmer and fisher needs and conditions.
b) Improved rural infrastructure, including appropriate services, that facilitates efficient movement of new knowledge, inputs, and services to farmers, and movement of agricultural products to markets.
c) Increased food production while preserving food quality and maintaining the proper environmental conditions and in the case of fisheries, adherence to effective conservation measures.
Actions to be taken
a) Eliminate policy distortions that lead to bias against agricultural and fisheries sectors; establish policies that specifically promote food security.
b) Ensure that national agricultural fisheries, and natural resource policies, plans, and practices are developed and implemented in a holistic approach, recognizing their fundamental ecological interdependence. Agriculture, fisheries, and forestry national strategies or action plans should be integrated to ensure the removal of perverse policies affecting either or all sectors.
c) Provide strong support for national agricultural research systems (NARS) and sustain the financial support and guidance of the CGIAR system. Support agricultural education to assure skilled human resources for transforming traditional agriculture and improve the ability of extension services and other technology transfer agents to carry new technologies and practices to farm communities.
d) Promote an integrated approach to shared water resources management that combines fisheries research, resource management, enforcement and effective partnering arrangement with industry groups as an important means to ensure that the resources is harvested with inter- and intra-generational needs in mind.
e) Invest in rural infrastructure including roads, irrigation, electricity, and communications and, where appropriate, provide services from the rural infrastructure that are more efficient, user-responsive, environmentally-friendly, and resourceful in using financing from both the public and private sectors.
f) Promote and ensure the effective functioning of markets for inputs and products. Public intervention is required to: (1) Ensure honest weights and measures and other standards of commerce. (2) Facilitate accurate, prompt, and open exchange of price and other market information. (3) Facilitate free entry and exit of firms to markets. (4) Promote functioning land and water markets with legal system that allows owners to buy and sell land and water and a banking system that allow land and water as effective collateral.
g) Produce, process, and store food in ways which conserve soil, water, and atmospheric and biological resources important to agriculture and which use them sustainably.
h) Support technologies and practices which reduce food waste and post-harvest losses.
3. Implementing Freer International Trade
Objectives
a) Rapidly growing trade in agricultural commodities and food products, without undue fluctuations in prices.
b) Continued ability to import needed food requirements.
Actions to be taken
a) Implement Uruguay Round reforms.
b) Continue the process of reforming agricultural and fisheries trade.
4. Improving Access to Food for Food Insecure Groups, Including on an Emergency
Objectives
a) Increased attention to the broader issues of sustainable livelihoods, with a view to overcoming basic causes of poverty and food security in the longer term.
b) Increased attention to the needs of food deficit areas and households, with a first priority to ensuring quantitative needs, but also to ensuring adequate nutrition.
c) Assistance programs, including food aid, consistent with, and integrated into, overall poverty-reduction and food-security programming strategies.
d) Promotion of household food security, the role of women, and the development potential of resource-poor areas.
e) Establishment of long term sustainable development strategies.
Actions to be taken
a) Integrate into national plans for social and economic development to eliminate absolute poverty and reduce poverty in general, strategies with explicit nutritional objectives taking into account intra-household food distribution issues and different needs of household members (e.g., prenatal, early childhood, iron for pregnant women).
b) Promote secure and gainful employment opportunities, with particular emphasis on women and indigenous groups, to alleviate poverty among both the rural and urban poor, including the implementation of complementary policies and measures such as utility pricing, credit provision, training, extension services, andä investments in education and health.
c) Undertake research into appropriate agricultural techniques and technologies for marginal areas, including creative ways to "drought proof" resource-poor areas and to promote sustainable practices in degraded areas. Develop complementary institutional reforms that can also address these problems, including promotion of community resource management and securing property rights.
d) Allocate resources to areas of social investment important for longer-term food security and development needs, including population stabilization and primary health (with emphasis on prenatal and early childhood), basic education, potable water, and sanitation.
e) Develop and provide effective safety nets to meet food needs of households and individuals who, as a chronic sense, are unable to secure their own food.
f) Develop early warning systems (including nutritional surveillance) that provide information on local food situations, taking into account geographic features and seasonal fluctuations, in order to ensure that local production and/or local markets make available safe and adequate food supplies to meet the energy and nutrient needs of the population.
g) Provide timely, appropriate and adequate emergency assistance, integrating these resources into overall development strategies and redistributing food aid so as to promote rather than disrupt or replace markets and, if possible, to createä employment. Coordination with partners who will be present to work on theä transitional and rehabilitative needs, beyond the immediate relief requirements, is critical.
h) Avert the adverse consequences of disaster-induced loss of locally adapted crops and livestock by securing the safety duplication of genetic resources andä establishing a standing capacity for their re-introduction.
5. Mobilizing More Effective International Efforts to Supplement and Reinforce National Commitments
Objectives
a) Mobilization of official development assistance, as fiscal situations permit, for selected partner countries, especially those that are undertaking major efforts to enhance their food security. Adoption of criteria of sustainability in the development of ODA strategies.
b) Increased effectiveness of aid resources through enhanced coordination, the full and effective participation of beneficiaries at all stages of development planning and delivery, a greater focus on poverty and gender analysis in planning interventions and greater focus on results rather than inputs.
Actions to be taken
a) Promote dialogue to encourage all countries, and especially food deficit countries, to put in place the economic, social, political, accountability, environmental, etc. frameworks necessary for poverty reduction and food security.
b) Use membership in the IFIs and United Nations development agencies to urge them to advocate policy reforms embodying the necessary economic, social, political, accountability, environmental, etc. frameworks necessary for poverty reduction and food security. Encourage multilateral institutions to adapt to the changing environment of the global economy of the 21st century by achieving greater productivity and effectiveness.
c) Enhance the ability of existing international machinery in the area of conflict prevention and resolution.
d) Provide financial and technical support to selected governments seeking to focus on long-term reduction of poverty, putting in place appropriate policy frameworks and enhancing the effectiveness and accountability/transparency of government services with particular emphasis on facilitating democratization; designing and implementing economic policy reforms; implementing and managing sustainable agricultural and fisheries research; establishing basic conditions for private marketing services to operate efficiently and effectively; and improving potable water, sanitation, population stabilization, primary health care, and cooking energy. Collaborate with selected governments and organizations which place high priority on food security by providing financial and technical support for key elements in national plans.
e) Continue to support appropriate and productive agricultural and related research and programming carried out by NARS (e.g.. river blindness eradication in West Africa) which can serve to increase agricultural production in a sustainable manner. In light of future trends in population growth, the need to continue generating sustainable increases in food productivity and the outstanding performance of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), donors must continue active oversight and major financial support to international agricultural research centres (IARCs) in the CGIAR.
f) Encourage increased collaboration between international agricultural research centres (IARC) and industrial countries' research communities to facilitate efficient use of scarce resources, and the open sharing of knowledge, expertise and germplasm. Attracting quality researchers is critical to obtaining effective research and developing countries should encourage initiatives that value agricultural research as a profession.
g) Develop, promote, and facilitate the exchange of information on the use of efficient and standardized methodologies for the study of social, cultural, and economic characteristics of fishing and associated activities.
h) Improve the effectiveness of food aid by targeting the most needy, enhancing its' economic impact, minimizing high overheads and transportation costs, and ensuring the sustainability of projects and achievement of desired results. Enhance the effectiveness of food aid, through the inclusion, where needed and feasible, of micro nutrients. Better ensure that the provision of food aid is consistent with long term sustainable development objectives. Collaborate with other donors in focusing efforts to make transition from relief to development in areas such as the Greater Horn of Africa.
i) Better coordinate, both among themselves and with other donors and multilateral organizations, development and food aid assistance, and enhance its effectiveness, including through a greater focus on "results". Working, where appropriate, through DAC Aid Guidelines.
j) Fully implement the Uruguay Round reforms and undertake measures to ensure that developing countries can be effectively integrated into the global trading system.
6. Monitoring and Follow-up
Objectives
a) Cooperation by all countries to achieve their individual goals and collaboration among all countries and international actors to organize collective solutions to global issues.
b) Canadian and U.S. collaboration with other donor countries to achieve a greater level of coordination of efforts and to pursue initiatives to improve the effectiveness of assistance and development efforts.
Actions to be taken
National level a) Individual governments should determine by the end of 1997 how the World Food Summit Plan of Action can be best applied to their countries to promote sustainable food security. By the end of 1997, each country should establish a timetable and procedures for the regular assessment and reporting of progress toward food security.
b) Individual governments should continue to develop and apply criteria and indicators for the sustainable management of agriculture, fisheries, and forests and to demonstrate and evolve the concept of sustainable management through their application, taking into account specific regional and sub-regional conditions.
International Donor Level: Donors accept responsibility to supplement and reinforce best efforts of countries committed to alleviate food insecurity. a) The United States and Canada will continue to review their food aid and development assistance policies to assure that those resources are effectively used in support of selected countries that take steps to promote their food security and will continue to work with other donors to improve the coordination of food aid with development assistance.
International Organization Level a) FAO should develop a follow-up through the Committee on World Food Security to permit intergovernmental review in five years of progress toward world food security, including specific measurement of steps taken pursuant to adoption of the Plan of Action. The FAO Conference should review key developments in the subsequent year.
b) FAO and other relevant organizations should continue to strengthen their ability to provide policy advice to interested governments to promote national self-reliance.
c) FAO should continue to strengthen its early warning and food security assessment programs to support international donor community decision-making with respect to food emergencies.
d) The World Trade Organization should monitor the effects of the Uruguay Round on the supplies of basic foodstuffs from external sources for the least developed and net food importing developing countries and consider appropriate actionä consistent with the WTO Ministerial Decision on Measures Concerning theä Possible Negative Effects of the Reform Program on Least-Developed and Netä Food-Importing Countries in the event of adverse impact on those countries.
e) In addition, the United States and Canada encourage the multilateral development banks to enhance their support of developing country efforts to increase food security, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. Canada and the United States also urge these organizations to increase and enhance their efforts to assist developing countries keen to implement more effectively their own poverty reduction strategies and national food policies. In light of the current sharp increase in international grain prices, the International Monetary Fund should consider a review of the adequacy of its mechanisms for assisting in resolution of balance-of-payments problems caused by short-term increases in food import costs.
-- Jean-Charles Le Vallee <mailto:aaa183@agora.ulaval.ca>Internet Forum on Food Security Universite Laval, Quebec, Canada Http://fao50.fsaa.ulaval.ca/ Website Editor To subscribe to the forum, write to: mailto:fao50@grr.ulaval.ca
International Association of Food and Agribusiness Economy (Association Internationale d'Economie Alimentaire et Agro-Industrielle,AIEA2) Http://fao50.fsaa.ulaval.ca/aiea2/ Website Editor =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-