المنتدى العالمي المعني بالأمن الغذائي والتغذية

Thank you for the invitation to comment on draft terms of reference

Please find below four general comments on the draft TOR, a comment on the governance aspect of MSPs, and a recommendation about how to better hand the financing aspect of MSPs.

Multistakeholder partnerships (MSPs) combine resources and expertise of different actors, which has made them attractive as a way to address complex issues that cannot easily be solved by a single actor. MSPs are identified in SDG 17 (in particular articles 17.6 and 17.7) as a central tool in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. They will be key in sharing experiences, technologies, knowledges, and in mobilising domestic and foreign, public and private resources, in line with the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA) and with the CFS principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food systems (CFS-RAI).

The report shall explore the notion of multistakeholder partnerships related to food security and nutrition, looking at both processes and outcomes. The report shall assess the effectiveness of MSPs in realizing their objectives, in financing and improving FSN outcomes, as well as their contribution to the governance of food systems. The report shall suggest methods to map the different categories of MSPs, and criteria to assess them against the objective of improving their contribution to FSN in the framework of the 2030 Agenda.

The report shall address the following questions:

·         Who are the stakeholders in food security and nutrition? What are the interests and motivations of each stakeholder? How to attract and retain partners? What are their various levels of responsibility?

·         How to define “multistakeholder partnership” for food security and nutrition? What are the existing types of partnerships for financing and improving food security and nutrition? What are the tensions between the nature of these stakeholders and the functions of the partnerships?

·         What are the goals, effectiveness, impact and performance of various forms of MSPs in reaching FSN objectives, in the context of the 2030 Agenda? What criteria, indicators, qualitative or quantitative approaches and methodologies could be used to assess the effectiveness, efficiency, inclusiveness, transparency, accountability, and value added for different types of MSPs?

·         To what extent do existing MSPs influence national, regional and international policies and programmes for FSN?

·         What are the potential controversies related to MSPs?

·         What are/should be the respective roles and responsibilities of public, private stakeholders and civil society in such partnerships? What should be the respective contributions of each in the financing and improvement of FSN?

·         How to ensure to all stakeholders a “fair” representation in multistakeholder decision making process? How to ensure meaningful and effective participation of the people affected by the MSP, in the decision-making process, including in the setting and implementation of priorities?

·         How to improve MSPs in order to better implement the SDGs and improve FSN? What incentives mechanisms and legal and financial tools could be the most effective, efficient in this perspective? How the choice of the tools impact on the governance and on the effectiveness of MSPs?

Do these questions correctly reflect the main issues to be covered?

Are you aware of references, examples, success stories, innovative practices and case studies that could be of interest for the preparation of this report? What are the existing MSPs related to FSN that you consider more relevant and why?

The report shall provide a concise and focused review of the evidence-base, coming from diverse forms of knowledge and suggest concrete recommendations directed to different categories of stakeholders, in order to contribute to the design of policies, initiatives and investments required for MSPs to contribute to successfully finance and implement the 2030 Agenda.

On the basis of the analysis, the report will identify the conditions of success of MSPs and elaborate concrete, actionable, actor-oriented policy recommendations to fuel CFS policy discussions in October 2018.

Four general comments

(1) a ‘concise and focused review’ – There are far, far too many topics to present a concise and focused review. If each bullet is given a chapter, the report would have eight chapters, but within some bullets there are additional topics

(2) Some of the topics in a single bullet do not really relate to each other. For example, the first bullet seeks a definition of ‘stakeholder’, a summary of interests and motivations of each type of stakeholder, an analysis of responsibility of each stakeholder, and a proposal for how to keep each category of stakeholder engaged in the process.  

(3) The terms of reference should address and analyze separately – governance, effectiveness, efficiency, responsibilities and liabilities, financial contributions,  political-economic context of MSPs by sector, relation of FAO to each MSP and vice versa, downside risk factors and MSP accountability to beneficiaries

(4) Attention should be given to difference between ‘stakeholder categories’ and the particular ‘organizational/individual stakeholder’ representing each stakeholder category. The current terms of reference unwisely uses the terms interchangeably.

As my current research interests are in the governance aspects of MSPs and financing for sustainable development, let me raise a couple of suggestions for the TOR

Re the governance aspects of MSPs

The first question in the first bullet and the seventh question are not really helpful. Everyone, who eats lunch or alternatively does not have one meal a day, is a ‘stakeholder’ in food security and nutrition. Responses then to the first question too quickly come down to how to designate ‘representatives’ for categories of food-security-and-nutrition stakeholders with little regard how these ‘representatives’ would communicate their appointed categories. Responses to the seventh question assume that all of these people could have ‘fair’, ‘meaningful’ and ‘effective’ participation in all MSPs. And one still needs to incorporate somehow corporate institutions as food-security-and-nutrition stakeholders.

It would be more useful to separate out (a) MSPs that provide advice to Governments at the FAO; (b) MSPs that are focused on a particular sector-based problem; (c) MSPs that are focused on delivering a project in a developing country; and (d)  MSPs which are setting socially responsible global food market standards (e.g. Marine Stewardship Council-type organizations).

Each of these four types of MSPs could well involve different stakeholder category and different combination of individual stakeholders.

Re the financing contributions from MSPs

·         Re the financing  as expressed in the following expressions (i.e. “existing types of partnerships for financing … food security and nutrition”, “respective contributions of each [public, private stakeholders and civil society] in the financing and improvement of FSN?” ; “? What incentives mechanisms and legal and financial tools could be the most effective”)

The way the concept of ‘financing’ is presented suggests that the TOR is looking principally at FDI or philanthropy oriented financial resources. The potential ways that the economic foundation for a solid food security and nutrition system could involve maybe eight to ten quite different financing mechanisms. These financial mechanisms could range from discounts on agricultural loan rates to ecosystem price payments for good water management and from corporate underwriting of relevant R&D to family-based subsidies to local farmers. For a study of a MSPs and financing, the net effect of these vastly different financing systems include (a) the difficulty – really the inability – to aggregate the different forms of capital movement, (b) balancing the internal power relationships inside the MSP to compensate for differences in access to capital by individual stakeholders, and (c) insuring that competitive pressures between MNCs does not allow a particular MNCs to take commercial advantage of their participation in an FAO-sponsored MSP.  In short then my recommendation is that a future TOR explore the relationship between the multiple forms of financing and MSPs and that this topic not be buddle into the 2018 report.