Second Drafting Session of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development

 

 

RBA side event - Second Drafting Session of the

Third International Conference on Financing for Development

 

Friday 17 April 2015

 

FAO Statement

 

 

Mr Chair, Distinguished Members of the Panel, Ladies and Gentlemen

 

• The centrality of food security, nutrition and agricultural development as a pre-condition for achieving the SDGs is often overlooked. Without rapid progress in ending hunger and malnutrition, achieving most of the SDGs will be difficult.

 

• The fight to eliminate poverty and end hunger will be won or lost in rural areas, where,. This is an important trend: despite significant rural to urban migration, extreme poverty is becoming more concentrated in rural areas, which invariably enjoy lower levels of public and private investments, poorer infrastructure and fewer services targeted to the most vulnerable.

 

• Measures are needed to boost both private and public investment towards sustainable and inclusive food systems. Smallholders across the world represent the major source of investment. Policies and public investment must therefore provide the right – enabling – investment environment, while boosting the capacity to invest of small producers, processors and other actors of the food systems.

 

• Promoting gender equality and women's empowerment also requires specific focus while designing new financing provisions and investments. Women represent in average 43 percent of the agriculture work force but invariably enjoy less access to productive resources and opportunities than men. FAO has demonstrated that "closing the gender gap" increases agricultural output in developing countries while reducing significantly the number of hungry.

 

• The positive social, economic and environmental externalities generated by agriculture are often overlooked in policy making.  The role of sustainable agriculture in climate change mitigation and natural resources conservation is central to society’s overall sustainable development.

 

• Agricultural growth is more effective in reducing poverty than growth in other sectors. In addition, the agricultural sector’s growth has important multiplier effects on employment and growth in other sectors. This calls for more and better investment in agriculture.

 

• FAO is currently revising earlier estimates of the investments needed to support the required expansion in food production for ending hunger by 2030. Preliminary results will be released within a few weeks.  

 

• In Africa, the Maputo Declaration which led to launching the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP), and – ten years later - the follow-up Malabo Declaration is one example of concerted efforts in support of agriculture and rural development at country and regional level. It includes the formulation, through a consultative process, of agricultural, food security and nutrition investment plans, resulting in concrete programmes and projects, which have been co-financed by Governments, private sector, bi-lateral donors, International Financing Institutions, UN agencies and the Global Agriculture and Food Security Programme (GAFSP). CAADP helps mobilising additional domestic resources… and also external resources!

 

• As highlighted in the FfD Conference Zero Draft Outcome Document, it has become ever more vital to increase the effectiveness of development cooperation through strengthened coordination at country level.
  

 

• The implementation of multi-stakeholder negotiated frameworks on rural investment, such as the Responsible Agricultural Investment Principles, can also underpin the renewed global partnership. In this respect, there is a need to improve the enabling environment for private investments throughout the food systems, by smallholder producers, medium and larger investors.ODA, South-South and triangular cooperation, and other international public flows will be critical in financing sustainable development. But maximizing the use of domestic and international resources and mobilizing actors for implementing the post-2015 agenda will require a prioritization of actions, with resources devoted to areas that have the biggest multi-dimensional impact and multiplier effect.

 

• Finally, I would like to underscore the importance of capacity building that will be needed to make it happen, i.e. for ending hunger, achieving food security and improved nutrition, and promoting sustainable agriculture and rural development.

 

• Thank you for your attention.