FAO’s Hand in Hand Initiative: Using data and partnerships to change lives and livelihoods
9 April 2020, Washington, DC/ Rome – The FAO Insights webinar series, launched by FAO North America, featured Máximo Torero, Chief Economist and Assistant Director General of the Economic and Social Development Department at FAO, for its inaugural event. Torero presented an overview of FAO’s Hand- in-Hand initiative and its relevance in the current context of the COVID-19 pandemic to a large audience of participants from over 30 countries. The webinar series aims to share FAO’s knowledge and expertise with stakeholders in North America and beyond.
Hand-in-Hand is a country-led evidence-based initiative launched by FAO at the margins of the 47th UN General Assembly in New York (2019). It aims to accelerate progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), by enabling matchmaking between countries that have the highest poverty and hunger rates with developed countries. In this effort, FAO will help by identifying opportunities, bottlenecks and investment gaps at the national level, and developing a detailed monitoring and evaluation framework with clear targets for 2030.
“If you look at the index of vulnerability that the UN has issued in terms of health capabilities, those countries that are on our list of 52 right now, clearly will be the ones most affected if the pandemic grows,” said Torero. The Hand-in-Hand Initiative targets Least Developed Landlocked Countries, Least Developed Small Island Developing States, and countries affected by food crises. He added that these countries “can face significant problems in terms of food availability, since almost all of them are net food-importing countries.”
“This is a country-owned initiative, the countries are working with us to design the type of projects they want to prioritize, and we provide them with technical evidence to help them do this,” explained Torero, as he shared the six key principles behind the framework. These include prioritizing the poorest of poor; ensuring that strategies apply to the area’s agriculture potential; using a food systems approach to better understand and minimize tradeoffs; develop a sub-national database of donor activities; a web-based platform with a suite of geospatial data; and a prioritization of metric, focusing on poverty and hunger rates.
“We believe that the power of this information with the data that countries collect themselves can make a big difference,” added Torero. The Initiative allows FAO to bring together data from 25 of its data generating units along with other networks to create a platform that allows advanced geo-spatial modelling and analysis to identify the best opportunities to improve the livelihoods of rural populations.
Madhur Gautam, Lead Economist within the Agriculture Global Practice at the World Bank, provided a brief intervention following the presentation and lauded the Initiative’s analytical, evidence-based and collaborative approach, which he noted is consistent with the World Bank’s strategy. The “Initiative reflects the growing global consensus on the need for a faster, robust, and resilient food system transformation,” said Gautam.
During the Q & A session, Torero addressed how the initiative can respond to different scenarios such as the current COVID-19 pandemic, build resilience in areas affected by conflict, and engage different levels of government while facilitating partnerships with other stakeholders such as research institutes and the private sector. In closing, he emphasized, “Whatever we can do to reduce uncertainty of information for decision-makers, public and private sector players, I think will help to relieve constraints and resolve problems.”
Read more
New FAO Hand-in-Hand Initiative to maximize partnerships for greater impacts