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FAO Liaison Office with the United Nations in New York

UN56SC Pre-Session event, Capacity Development for Relevant, Resilient, and Agile National Statistical Systems: Are We on the Right Track? Session 1: Fostering Sustainability and Institutional Resilience

José Rosero Moncayo, FAO Chief Statistician and Director of Statistics Division

28/02/2025

  • Let me share with you the experience of FAO on this important topic. For almost 80 years, FAO has been involved in international statistical capacity development efforts, which are crucial for ensuring the availability of high-quality statistics for timely and impactful evidence-based decision-making.
  • FAO’s statistical capacity development strategy is fully aligned and supportive of the concept of fostering sustainability and institutional resilience. It is based on a set of principles that we follow strictly. These are: the principle of fit for purpose to identify actions that are needed by the countries, the principle of knowledge transfer which is at the heart of its implementation, and the one of country empowerment, as this is key to promote sustainability of actions.
  • The strategy includes various capacity development programs, that goes from support on the establishing functional national statistical systems to conducting censuses and surveys, and finally, producing, disseminating, and using specific data and indicators.
  • For instance, at the first level, we have been implementing for 13 years the Global Strategy to Improve Agricultural and Rural Statistics, Strategy approved by the UN Stats Commission in 2010, that supports, among others, countries in the design and implementation Strategic Plans for Agricultural and Rural Statistics (SPARS). The design process of these plans includes an in-depth assessment of the key institutional, capacity and data gaps faced by countries and a prioritization of programmes and activities to improve national agricultural statistical systems within the national strategies for statistical development.
  • At the second level, our World Census of Agriculture Programme and the 50x2030 initiative, this last one jointly implemented with the WB, are supporting countries in preparing and mobilizing resources for the conduct of agricultural censuses and surveys, therefore guaranteeing that countries have the structural and the current data available to establish efficient and modern data production systems of agricultural statistics.
  • In terms of financial sustainability, the implementation of the “50 by 2030” initiative relies on a novel data financing strategy, combining donors’ support for the delivery of technical assistance with a financing mechanism for data collection - between partner countries and World Bank – through IDA loans that usually cover the collection of at least 3 rounds of surveys in a country. The combination of the length of the programme and the fact that countries are paying their data collection creates ownership which is a key factor for sustainability of the action.
  • Our programmes also include a component on fostering data use. This component intends to build decision makers’ capacity and motivation to enhance the use of survey data, and sustain the demand for data over time, a key necessary condition for the sustainability of data production systems.
  • Finally, let me also mention that institutional resilience and sustainability goes hand in hand with constant innovation and modernization. In this regard, FAO is committed to supporting countries in modernizing their data systems, in particular on the use of alternative data sources in the production of food and agriculture statistics. Our EOSTAT programme focuses on supporting countries on the use of earth observation data in generating agriculture statistics at a lower cost and in modernizing their statistical infrastructures.
  • While FAO believes that its strategy is contributing to build the resilience and sustainability of our partner countries, our main challenge in doing so is to secure the funding required to maintain and expand our inventory of capacity development programmes. Donors’ funding commitments for statistics are getting scarcer and scarcer, in a context where the demand for data has never been so high. On this, FAO would like to see a clear call from the Statistical Commission and its Members individually in other development fora to sustain and increase investments in statistics and in statistical capacity development.
  • Many thanks.