The overview of the IPPC activities was presented by Dr Peter Kenmore. He announced the adoption of
three new ISPMs and the Glossary. On matters relating to the Business Plan, he expressed concern over
the increasingly difficulty to secure sufficient funding. At present, some activities have to be run from trust
funds obtained through Bilateral and Multilateral Agreement donor's funds. He was confident, that with
proper priority and some innovation, most shortfalls could be overcome.
An independent evaluation of the IPPC was carried out during the past two years at the request of the CPM, involving surveys, interviews and visits to 28 countries. Some strong recommendations were made, including some echoing the Business Plan. As a result, it was reassuring to note that the IPPC was moving in the right direction. There was also emphasis on biodiversity, and technical assistance. Among the more positive recommendations was the requirement to increase staff, especially the need to have a full time Secretary to run the IPPC programmes. A Preliminary Issues and Recommendation Paper on the evaluation was presented to CPM-2. The CPM raised concerns about technical assistance, and called an extraordinary meeting of the SPTA. This met in Rome, and its report on FAO-relevant recommendations would be tabled at the next meeting of the FAO Programme Committee (3 to 7 September 2007).
On the focus group on Standard Setting, Dr Kenmore reported that they had recommended that the Procedural Manual in IPPC be improved to increase transparency and to enable clear references to the proper authorities.
All information relating to the activities of the IPPC may be found in its internet portal (https://www.ippc.int/IPP/En/default.jsp)
To a question regarding the establishment of trust funds, the speaker replied that multilateral trust funds had been established for more than six years. The major donors were New Zealand, the European Union, Canada and USA. Some countries contributed in kind, like the Republic of Korea which funded 2 ISPM workshops. He suggested a model of specific funding of a single programme to be put forward by the CPM.
In reply to a request for evaluation reports for individual countries, the speaker suggested that the next CPM meeting be used to discuss about the dissemination of evaluation reports of the individual countries involved in the survey by the evaluation team.
