FAO Civil Society Regional Consultation on Food Security in Asia and the Pacific Region

Consultation Documents

2010-05-16T21:37:00.000-07:00

Available for download are the following documents from the consultation

1. Annex01 List of Participants

2. Annex02 Proceedings of the Consultation

3. Annex03 Consultation Programme and Agenda

4. Annex04 Opening and Welcome Remarks

5. Annex05 FAO Goals and priority areas for action in Asia and the Pacific

6. Annex06 Concept Note

7. Annex07 Consolidated Matrix

8. Annex08 Presentation on ADB CSO Windows

9. Annex09 Recap of Day One

10. Annex10 AFA climate change presentation

11. Annex11 Workshop Template

Welcome Remarks

2010-03-01T00:38:00.000-08:00

By Mr. Kazuyuki Tsurumi, FAO Representative in the Philippines

I wish to warmly welcome the representatives of the Regional and International Civil Society Organizations, International Inter-Governmental Organizations and Colleagues from the FAO Regional Office and Headquarters to Manila.

This consultation is devoted to enhancing FAO’s collaboration in the Asia and the Pacific Region with the wide range of civil society important to food and agriculture; Non-Governmental, famers’, fishers, indigenous people, women’s, youth organizations.

This meeting is being held at an historic, but tragic moment: for the very first time 1 billion people in the world are hungry and malnourished. Sadly, the majority are in Asia, 642 million mostly in rural areas and many the very people that produce most of our food: farmers, fishers, women, indigenous peoples.

It is FAO’s obligation and ethical imperative for humanity to join together to end hunger and ensure dignity to all. Indeed, the Right to Food is the most fundamental of Human Rights. At the same time, some countries in Asia have made remarkable progress, for example China and Indonesia.

The World Food Summit in 1996 made the commitment to half the number of hungry and malnourished, at that time 840 million persons. This goal was reaffirmed with the adoption of Millenium Development Goal 1 in 2000 to half the proportion of hungry and reiterated at the World Food Summit: five years later in 2002. The World Summit on Food Security 2009 once again stated the need to confront the persistence of hunger and its enduring impacts on human welfare in the context of the global economic crisis, the dramatic rise of global food prices in 2007 and 2008, and the continuing volatility of prices and high prices to consumers.

The rise in the price of food has taken place in the context of FAO’s call to the global community to resolutely face a set of major challenges: the need for mitigation and adaptation of farmers to climate change; the perverse consequences of lack of investment in agriculture and rural development for over two decades, and the need to face the challenge of feeding 9 billion people by 2050. The food crisis of 2007-2008 highlighted the inadequacy of current governance of food security, which has now come back onto the “development agenda.” This is why the Committee on World Foosd Security (CFS) has changed and is becoming multi-stakeholder including representatives of civil society.

Civil society is an important partner of FAO to succeed in addressing these global challenges to food and agriculture and to feed the hungry. However, we must work and the national and regional levels, profit from your experience and expertise, and associate you from the beginning in the development of policies and programmes of activity.

This regional consultation is certainly a step in the right direction and – so I understand from colleagues from Bangkok and Rome - only a step in a process of regular consultation leading to the Regional Conferencee in 2010, to 2011 and beyond. Your organizations of farmers, fishers, indigenous peoples, women, youth, and NGOs are indeed more than development partners. You are strategic partners and allies of the FAO. The FAO Director-General has stated that civil society is often able to advocate for solutions to hunger and poverty that the FAO Secretariat cannot say directly to its governments.

At the country level here in the Philippines, the UN system is working closely with Civil Society Advisory Committee (CSAC) composed of national NGO associations to bring their voices, energies and actions to the table.

We hope that the outcome of your regional consultation can be shared with CSAC as an example of dialogue and emerging convergence on some issues between FAO and civil society organizations.
Dear Participants, Dear Colleagues. We wish to thank you for your attendance and we are looking forward to successful results of your meeting.

Also I hope you enjoy the stay in the Philippines, particularly the participants from the regions.

Thank you.

Opening Remarks

2010-02-26T07:03:00.000-08:00

By Ms. Marlene Ramirez, Secretary General - AsiaDHRRA

Isang magandang umaga po sa lahat! Good morning to all of you!

Our sincere appreciation to Mr. Tsurumi, FAO Country Representative, for his presence today and his inspiring message for all of us.

Please allow me, on behalf of AsiaDHRRA, as host NGO, to welcome you once again to this important consultation. A special welcome again to those who came from far away. You came at an important celebratory week in the Philippines, for the edsa “people power revolution” , which many of us in various ways participated in 1986. We claimed our democratic space from a dictatorship and united as a people. And we needed to be reminded of that gain, every time. Especially that after 26 years, majority of our poor people remain poor. Rural poverty abounds, thus the democracy that we fought hard for, has not really served the best interest of the majority. We are holding this meeting in the midst of our 2nd financial district called Ortigas Center, next to Makati. But please be cautioned that the modernity that you see around in no way represent the Philippines. So, I am glad that at least some of you will get to see the Cordilleras. Nevertheless, amidst all the uncertainties that many of our people face, we have endless reasons to thank for in this beautiful country, as nicely put by Jackie last night. So, a warm welcome.

In the next two days, we are also gathered for a not so very far off reason -- to help “democratize space” and find ways of institutionalizing civil society participation in an institution called FAO. When we were invited by FAO to help arrange for or coordinate this two day event, we did not think twice, and accepted it.

AsiaDHRRA , as a regional network dedicated to human resource development in the rural areas, and in building partnerships to develop leaders and rural communities, saw this meeting as an opportunity to further its effort, together with fellow regional CSOs, many of whom are with us today, of finding better ways of engaging FAO, especially at this time where more effective responses to the enormous challenge of food insecurity in the region, compounded by the recent global financial crisis and the growing concern for climate change, have to be put together.

In February 2008, I participated in the FAO-CSO meeting in Rome in preparation for the June HL meeting. I still recall my small intervention in that meeting, written in small notes: that FAO meetings in Rome will be best served if there are sufficient regional processes. I found it a pity that the many initiatives of CSOs at the regional/national level cannot be properly recognized during those global meetings given the lack of space, the unevenness of representation, and generally, the weakness of global stakeholders' being far-off from realities on the ground. I also asked then on the role of FAO's decentralized offices and the response was unclear to me. Or I actually thought there was a disconnect. I was on expectation that FAO-RAP, for instance, is feeding into the global process based on their stronger regional handle of the issues and their work at the national level. I was actually wondering if our small efforts of engaging the regional office was making sense at all.

As a regional network, we have maintained a view that the relevance of all these global debates and meetings of Rome-based food and agri agencies, is anchored on the translation of the resulting declarations/statements into concrete programming, strategies, mechanisms, and actions at the regional and national levels. We feel at this time that we have to participate/contribute to global processes, but the sustainability and incentive for us to continue along this, is in having clear handles of how these global commitments can become concrete results and outcomes at the national local level, seen in the improvement of the lives of those affected by the issues that we are dealing with.

We are here today, not just because we thought it'll just be a simple small meeting – 10 to 15 people, a first step of an important process. Now we are 35. But also because we believe that we have to be part of the solution to what we think is wrong or weak in the processes of civil society engagement with FAO. We thank FAO-RAP for their openness to engage CSOs and their constant assistance, as shown in recent regional meetings, and in collaboration with FAO-OCEP, for facilitating this process that we will partake in the coming days.

We sincerely thank all of you for being here. We appreciate the fact that we have a good number of basic sector representatives. This is important for us. And also the fact that we have representation from almost the same Asian stakeholders in the just concluded GFF supported by IFAD, hence giving us possibility of integrating some of the key action points from the GFF to the regional FAO process. And this relates to our call for the various UN food and agri agencies to continue to converge and find coherence in their strategies and actions, esp at the national and regional levels.

Finally, as your host, please do not hesitate to approach the secretariat for any assistance. We apologize for any inconvenience you may have experience towards the organizing of this meeting. We count on your goodwill and support to make the most of this opportunity before us, an serve well our agenda and aspiration for the rural poor in the AP region.

Please allow me at this point to introduce to you a very important person who will help us reach our objectives of this meeting. Some of you have met her last night, please welcome Ms. Carmela Ariza.

Maraming salamat po!

Marlene Ramirez
Secretary General
AsiaDHRRA

Day 1 Feb 24 Morning Session

2010-02-25T20:33:00.000-08:00

The FAO Civil Society Regional Consultation on Food Security in Asia and the Pacific Region convenes this morning, February 24 at the Richmonde Hotel, with a total of 35 representatives from 25 regional formations of rural sectors – namely, farmers, fishers, indigenous peoples, women, youth, cooperative, NGOs, and INGOs, in attendance.

FAO Representative in the Philippines Mr. Kazuyuki Tsurumi expressed, in his opening remarks, that the consultation – which is devoted to enhancing FAO’s collaboration in Asia and the Pacific Region with the wide range of civil society – is being held “at an historic, but tragic, moment.”

“For the very first time, one billion people in the world are hungry and malnourished, the majority of whom are in Asia, 642 million mostly in rural areas and many the very people that produce most of our food: farmers, fishers, women, indigenous peoples,” Mr. Tsurumi observed.

The morning session (Session I) set the context of the discussions through: (1) A brief sharing and leveling-off of expectations by each of the organizations participation in the forum; and (2) A presentation of the overall and specific objectives and of their institutional and policy context by Mr. Thomas Price, OCEP Senior Program Officer.

The morning concluded with a mapping exercise (Session II) consisting of breakout sessions followed by a plenary presentation of the patterns, trends, and commonalities experienced by the region in terms of CSO engagement with FAO. The participants elaborated on their experiences of engagement with FAO processes and projects in terms of strengths, weaknesses, gains, and specific recommendations for more meaningful processes and partnerships in the future.anez

Day 1 Feb 24 Afternoon Session

2010-02-24T20:50:00.000-08:00

The afternoon of Day 1 (February 24) commenced with Session III, which involved the mapping of CSO mechanisms on food security. Workshop discussions by the indigenous peoples, farmers, rural women, youth, and multisectoral groups convened for an hour to identify:

Existing global and regional mechanisms,
Links to national mechanisms; and
Plans for years 2010 to 2011.

The plenary that followed each group report discussed the various concerns related to simplifying, integrating and/or making coherent the various mechanisms and initiatives at the regional level, strengthening and consolidating the links within and across sectors and finding specific platforms where the various mechanisms intersect, making significant and meaningful the space available for the sectors, building and sharing knowledge about what works on the ground in terms of ending hunger, and ensuring that the various global and regional mechanisms translate initiatives into outputs that are actually and significantly felt by the sectors.

The day’s last segment, Session IV, dealt with existing processes for CSO participation in FAO and other IGOs. Mr. Chris Morris, Head of NGO and Civil Society Center Regional and Sustainable Development Department of the ADB discussed how the ADB is mainstreaming CSO participation in its various operations, and elaborated on the NGO Civil Society Center as a structural window specifically designed for ADB’s interaction with civil society. Mr. Thomas Price, Senior Program Officer of FAO’s OCEP, and Mr. Diderik de Vieeshauwer, FAO-Rap Information Officer, discussed openings for CSO participation in FAO’s overall governing structures and processes, especially the recent reform actions to level up CSO participation in committee (particularly CFS or Committee on World Food Security) meetings.

Asia and the Pacific Regional Civil Society Consultation

2010-02-22T06:15:00.000-08:00

The overall objective of the regional Civil Society consultations is to agree on a workplan for achieving a concrete civil society agenda with proposed outputs for the upcoming regional meetings, including for the realization of specific partnerships at sub-regional and regional levels.

The first regional consultation process will take place in Manila, Philippines on 24-25 February 2010 to be held in the Richmonde Hotel; 21 San Miguel Avenue, Ortigas Center, Pasig City.

The consultation is being organized by a local NGO host, the Asian Partnership for the Development of Human Resources in Rural Asia (AsiaDHRRA) and with support from FAO.

The Regional Consultations will have the following specific objectives:

Update and assess existing mechanisms and their contributions relevant to food security and nutrition, including existing networks, alliances and campaigns.
Update and identify existing regional spaces for civil society engagement in policy dialogue regarding agriculture, rural development and food security.
Contribute to the progressive implementation of CFS reform with a focus on strengthening FAO regional conference processes, engagement and roles of CSOs/NGOs and regional actors, and ensuring direct links and integration with existing processes relevant to food security and nutrition (including coordination at the regional/national level, monitoring/accountability mechanisms and development of a global framework).
Contribute to the development of FAO’s enhanced cooperation with civil society, notably through development of partnerships and regional platforms for exchange of information and action.
Nominate a specific team and develop a provisional agenda for a parallel meeting and consultation process during the FAO regional conferences.