Working at scale and strengthening resilience at the center of discussions with Brussels partners

During his two-day visit to Brussels, Rein Paulsen, Director of the FAO Office of Emergencies and Resilience met with various European Union officials with a clear message: FAO has already stepped up its efforts to reach those most in need throughout 2022, providing 30 million people with time-critical support. To reach the 2023 target of providing 60 million people, who are in acute food insecurity situations around the globe, the support of FAO partners is more crucial than ever before.

Paulsen explained with concrete examples, how FAO plays a leading role in building the evidence around acute food insecurity levels, analysis of drivers and lasting solutions, including through FAO`s role as co-founder of the Global Network Against Food Crises (GNAFC), co-lead of the Global Food Security Cluster and host of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).

Anticipatory action is a growing area of food crises management that relies on data analysis to predict where degradation of conditions might occur and act ahead of time. Such a preemptive approach reduces humanitarian needs, lessens human suffering and has demonstrated being cost effective by reducing funding requirements to respond to large-scale emergencies. FAO has been playing a vanguard role in bringing this kind of early, protective intervention into the mainstream of humanitarian programming. In the meeting with Michael Köhler acting director of DG ECHO, Paulsen stressed the relevance of the Pilot Programmatic Partnership and explained why FAO believes that Anticipatory action can really make a difference in people’s lives.

Paulsen also alluded to the overwhelming figures of food insecurity that have not stopped growing in recent years. For this reason, he stressed that business as usual was not an option and new ways of working and new approaches were necessary.

During his meeting at DG INTPA, Paulsen highlighted the relevance of resilient agrifood systems, particularly in fragile and crisis prone countries, and discussed the key role of the Global Network against Food Crises to prevent and respond to food crises. The global Network, an alliance of actors united by the commitment to tackle the root causes of food crises and promote sustainable solutions, adopts a coordinated and effective humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus approach which is recognized as a game changer to prepare for and address food crises.

The vicious circle that interlinks the compounding effects of food crises, fragility and conflicts was also discussed during a meeting with the European External Action Service (EEAS), where the centrality of strategic partnerships and synergetic collaboration was reaffirmed.

FAO`s response to the war in Ukraine was the main theme of the discussions Paulsen held with DG NEAR. During the meeting he updated his counterparts on FAO's technical and humanitarian activity in Ukraine, alluding to FAO's intervention to support the country’s capacity of grain storage.

You can read more about the latest Humanitarian Appeal that was launched on 1 December here.

You can read more about the Anticipatory action here and about the Programmatic Partnership here.