Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

A key pillar of the Paris Agreement is the Enhanced Transparency Framework (ETF), which aims to raise ambitions for climate action through transparent country reporting. The development of National Forest Monitoring Systems with open and transparent data can enable action for forest and climate. In light of the climate emergency, it is time to scale up efforts toward accurate, open and transparent forest data, to catalyze higher ambitions under the Paris Agreement.

The FAO webinar “Open and Transparent Forest data: Innovation and Technology for Climate Action” will highlight global and national efforts in the field of forest monitoring that support the implementation of the ETF under the Paris Agreement.

Specifically, the webinar aims to:   

• present the “Building global capacity to increase transparency in the forest sector" (CBIT-Forest)” project and its contribution to the ETF under the Paris Agreement;
• present latest digital data sources and related dissemination innovations contributing to the Paris Agreement by promoting transparency and open data, and
• share experience from Bangladesh on data management and transparency.        

The webinar will take place on Wednesday 11 November 2020, 14:30 – 16:00 CEST.

To join the webinar session on Zoom, kindly register here.

Please access further information on the webinar here.  

FAO has launched The State of Agricultural Commodity Markets 2020 (SOCO 2020). The report aims to discuss policies and mechanisms that promote sustainable outcomes – economic, social and environmental – in agricultural and food markets, both global and domestic.

The analysis is organized along the trends and challenges that lie at the heart of global discussions on trade and development. These include the evolution of trade and markets; the emergence of global value chains in food and agriculture; the extent to which smallholder farmers in developing countries participate in value chains and markets; and the transformative impacts of digital technology on markets.

Along these themes, SOCO 2020 discusses policies and institutions that can promote inclusive economic growth and also harness markets to contribute towards the realization of the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals.

The report also looks at policy responses to address the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on food value chains, both nationally and globally.

The report is available in all six UN languages and can be downloaded here.

FAO/GIEWS has released the latest issue of the Crop Prospects and Food Situation quarterly report, which highlights that food assistance needs grow as the COVID-19 pandemic hits incomes. Globally, 45 countries, including 34 in Africa, are in need of external assistance for food. The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly through the loss of income and jobs related to containment measures, have severely aggravated global food security conditions, as well as increasing the number of people in need of assistance. Conflicts and weather shocks remained critical factors affecting the current high levels of severe food insecurity.

HIGHLIGHTS

Africa

Larger harvests are estimated in Southern Africa and East Africa, despite floods and outbreaks of desert locusts; although pest damages have been largely contained, serious concerns remain in some countries. Adverse weather reduced wheat outputs in North African countries, while cereal production in West Africa is foreseen at a slightly above-average level. Protracted conflicts continue to limit growth in agricultural production in Central Africa.

Asia

Widespread floods caused damage in several countries in Far East Asia, but rains across the subregion were also beneficial for paddy production and the output in 2020 is forecast at a record high. In the Near East, reflecting improved security conditions and favourable weather, production upturns were estimated in the Syrian Arab Republic and Iraq in 2020. Rainfall shortages generally kept wheat outputs in CIS countries at below-average levels, but barley production increased driven by larger plantings.

Latin America and the Caribbean

In South America, cereal production is forecast to reach a new record high in 2020 underpinned by large maize plantings in Brazil and Argentina, as weak currencies boosted export demand and incentivized farmers. In Central America and the Caribbean, overall favourable weather conditions supported good yields, and cereal production in 2020 is expected at a slightly above-average level.

Please download the full report here: http://www.fao.org/3/cb1101en/CB1101EN.pdf

The FAO Technical Network on Poverty Analysis (Think-PA) is pleased to invite you to the webinar "Behind the scenes of a global poverty number and the challenges of rural estimates"

Wednesday, June 17 |15:00-16:30|

Please register here. You will receive an e-mail with the link to webinar

The first target of the SDGs is to eradicate extreme poverty, currently measured as people living on less than $1.90 a day. The World Bank estimated that, in 2015, 734 million people lived in extreme poverty worldwide and, of these, about 80 percent lived in rural areas. Not surprisingly, the share of rural inhabitants in developing countries that live in extreme poverty is almost three times higher than the share of those living in urban areas.  What is behind the estimation of these apparently straightforward numbers? How are the figures related to rural poverty calculated? And what could be improved?

In this webinar, R. Andrés Castañeda Aguilar will explain how the World Bank estimates global poverty, highlighting the main methodological challenges of using the current approach for rural areas. Finally, he will discuss potential ways to improve global rural poverty estimates, using an example from Latin America to illustrate their implications.

This webinar looks in greater detail into some of the issues introduced during the last Think-PA webinar on “Estimating the impact of COVID-19 on rural poverty” (watch the video recording here), with a more systematic focus on the methodological challenges to estimating global rural poverty.

Agenda:

• Introduction by Katia Covarrubias, Economist, FAO
• Presentation by R. Andrés Castañeda Aguilar, Economist/Data Scientist, World Bank
• Comment by José Rosero Moncayo, Director of the FAO Statistics Division
• Open discussion

Guest speakers’ bio:

Raul Andrés Castañeda Aguilar is an Economist/Data Scientist in the Data Group of the Department of Development Economics at the World Bank, where, during the last ten years, he has conducted socioeconomic analysis in topics related to poverty, welfare distribution, and inequality of opportunities. He is interested in the analysis of data for policy dialog, statistical and methodological research, and the development of computational tools for socioeconomic analysis. He holds a Master of Science in Economics from the University of Rosario, Colombia and a Master of Arts in Apologetics from the Biola University, USA.

For more information on the Think-PA please click here

To join the Think-PA, please send an e-mail to [email protected]

4 June, 15:00 - 16:15 CEST 

In the context of the gLOCAL week, the evaluation offices of  FAO, IFAD and WFP with the support of EvalForward are organizing an online learning event on innovative methods and approaches in evaluation, and on how innovations can provide lessons for progress under SDG2 “End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture”.



During the event participants will be able to join one of the below parallel sessions and discuss with their peers. Main takeaways from the sessions will be shared with the plenary.

Key note by Masahiro Igarashi

Director of FAO Office of Evaluation and Chair of the United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG)

Parallel sessions:

1. Innovative approaches and tools for evaluation. 

This session will discuss approaches that evaluation can adopt in times of crisis and present practical methods and tools such as remote sensing and synthesis, and more.

Speakers: Hansdeep Khaira (IFAD) and Carlos Tarazona (FAO)



2. Learning from experience: Community-driven development approaches and innovations.

This session will illustrate how evaluations contribute to knowledge and learning, using the cases of the evaluation synthesis on community-driven development (CDD) approaches and  the corporate-level evaluation on innovations in IFAD.

Speakers: Johanna Pennarz (IFAD) and Maximin Kouessi Kodjio (IFAD) 



3. Going visual in a virtual world: how visualization is bringing greater engagement to evaluation discussions.

Recent experiences in using visual tools for presenting and discussing evaluation work that can be also used in virtual settings will be presented, with examples from Bangladesh, Laos and Myanmar.

Speakers: Yumiko Kanemitsu (WFP) and Keisuke Taketani (facilitation and visualisation expert)

Register for the event here: https://fao.zoom.us/j/97262395101

Following the event, participants will receive all material being discussed and shared.