FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Asia and the Pacific Hiroyuki Konuma today briefed Ambassadors and senior embassy officials from some 25 FAO member countries with embassies in Bangkok on the new FAO Director General’s Medium Term Plan (MTP) 2014-17 and the Programme of Work and Budget (PWB) 2014-15. The MTP and PWB will be presented to FAO’s governing Conference in June 2013 for adoption.

The document refocuses FAO’s strategic direction in the face of rising food demand, lingering food insecurity, malnutrition, including rising obesity levels, rural poverty, increasingly complex agricultural and food systems, more dynamic agriculture trade flows and regulations, climate change, and the need for better governance to address increasing agricultural development complexity.

The goal of the new focus is to improve the impact of the services that FAO offers member countries in supporting their efforts to attain hunger free and sustainable societies.
In his briefing, Konuma outlined the strategic thinking process and explained the five new cross-cutting strategic objectives (SOs) for the future work of FAO.

“The Strategic Objectives express the development outcomes, in countries, regions and globally, that FAO expects to achieve over a 10-year timeframe based on FAO’s value-added interventions,” Konuma said.
 
Konuma listed the five Strategic Objectives as:
1.   Contribute to the eradication of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition.
2.   Increase and improve provision of goods and services from agriculture, forestry and fisheries in a sustainable manner.
3.   Reduce rural poverty.
4.   Enable more inclusive and efficient agricultural and food systems at local, national and international levels.
5.   Increase the resilience of livelihoods to threats and crises.

The level of results of the strategic objectives are development outcomes in the medium-term and they can only be achieved through the combined efforts of governments, FAO, UN partners and other stakeholders. It is because of this that Konuma with today’s briefing has begun the process of building a common understanding and dialogue among FAO member countries.

The Programme of Work, set forth in the PWB 2014-15, embodies the tangible outcome of efforts to refocus FAO’s strategic direction. In conjunction with the strengthened results framework in the Medium Term Plan 2014-17, it introduces new programmatic ways for FAO to carry out its work. It also focuses FAO’s resources and efforts on those areas where the Organization’s comparative advantages are largest, and it aims to deliver results where impacts are greatest.

The briefing also covered the status of the global and regional food security situation and future outlook. Preparations for the 32nd Regional Conference (APRC), which will be held in Mongolia in March 2014, were also a subject of the briefing.