Statement on the occasion of
theTwenty-eigth Conference
Rome, Italy, 20 October - 2 November 1995
Mr Chairman of the Conference,
Mr Independent Chairman of the Council,
Honourable Ministers,
Your Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It was only a few days ago, in the
timeless majesty of the Château Frontenac in that
charming city on the banks of the Saint Lawrence, that we
dipped deeply into the past to rediscover our roots and
the depth of our dimension.
On 16 October, World Food Day and the
birthday of our Organization, we climbed to the pinnacle
of our founding fathers' philosophical ideals to touch
its heights.
Today we must plunge back to earth and
come face to face with the harsh reality of our
programmes and our resources.
I shall thus not touch upon the issue
of our Organization, how it has changed, and its future
prospects, which were such a prominent feature of my
Fiftieth Anniversary commemorative address. I shall be
speaking to you more prosaically of a much more modest
four-year time- frame covering the 1994-95 and 1996-97
biennia.
The 28th Conference of FAO comes at a
crucial time in its existence.
The Fiftieth Anniversary ceremonies
were an unqualified success thanks to the memorable
welcome and generous hospitality of the governmental
authorities of Canada, the Province of Quebec and Quebec
City. In the course of this last week, the Ministerial
Meeting preparatory to the World Food Summit approved the
"Quebec Declaration", reaffirming the fundamental human
right to food and the vital importance of the sustainable
management of plant, animal, forestry and fishery
resources. Lastly the Symposium "People at the heart of
development" revealed the unity of views of the non-
governmental organizations, the academic world and the
private sector on the need for a relentless struggle to
eradicate hunger in the world.
All of these events augur well for us
to return to our roots, and to embrace the faith and hope
that spurred the great visionaries to make the bet of a
lifetime and take up the collective challenge and
commitment of ensuring "Bread for all", in the aftermath
of the most destructive human undertaking of all times.
Recent times have, unhappily, seen a
resurgence of isolationism and the propensity to crawl
back into one's shell, with exacerbated criticism of
United Nations and Bretton Woods institutions, a throwing
into question of the principle of universality, and a
weakened commitment for aid to development.
These are all signs and precursors of
a revival of the demons of egocentricism and exclusion,
and of a growing penchant for the primacy of force as an
instrument of international and domestic relationships.
The twilight of the 20th century thus
foretells a night of anguish in a bipolar and fragmented
world in which the antagonists of yesteryear are
re-emerging from the depths of intolerance. And as the
21st century dawns, the sun may well come up on a world
filled with danger and devoid of compassion.
Quite apart from the local wars and
ethnic and religious conflicts, the looming danger for
humanity is an insidious inclination toward
"laisser-faire" and "laisser-aller" which is steeped in a
religious, indeed dogmatic, belief in the universal and
holistic virtues of the market-place as the universal
answer to all domestic and international problems.
While the fall of the Berlin Wall
tolled the knell for state socialism and collectivization
as effective answers to economic questions, and while
bureaucracy and waste have tarnished the image of many
government institutions and certainly no one would wish
to return to the mistakes of the past, still we are also
forced to note that the rules of competition have done
nothing to eradicate the scourges of poverty, hunger,
unemployment and exclusion, any more than they have
prevented over-exploitation of our natural resources and
the progressive degradation of our environment.
Social and moral values are a
necessary complement to mechanisms of financial
accumulation if we are to build domestic and
international relations grounded in brotherhood and the
sense of belonging to the same global village. These are
the underlying values of the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations and its motto "Fiat
Panis".
And the danger for our Organization
looms in the form of an impulse to cut the Organization's
already insufficient resources. Whereas the acceptance of
a zero-growth budget was already a step backward in the
light of growing needs, attempts are now being made to
drop to a negative-growth budget in real and indeed in
nominal terms.
While we cannot fail to note the very
real financial straits of some Member Nations and their
concern to economize and rectify imbalances in their
national budgets, we also need to keep a reasonable sense
of proportion. A minimum critical financial mass is after
all essential when the job at hand is to implement
programmes for 176 Member Nations, ensure the fundamental
human right to food, and organize the sustainable
management of the world's plant, animal, forestry and
fishery resources and of their terrestrial and aquatic
environments.
It is impossible to make drastic and
immediate cuts in FAO's resources without jeopardizing
the methodical and systematic efforts that have been made
since the June 1994 FAO Council to streamline structures
and procedures, decentralize resources to the user level,
find innovative modes of intervention, and retarget and
integrate action in priority areas.
In the management sector, for example:
- the number of staff posts in the
highest categories have been reduced compared to the
lower categories. The posts of Assistants to Assistant
Director-Generals and Directors have been eliminated;
- international Programme Officers
have been replaced by national
counterparts;
- the General Service staff is being
reduced through increasing recourse to modern office
technology;
- experts transferred to the
Regional and Sub-regional Offices have qualified but
less expensive administrative personnel;
- the consolidation of sectoral
operations divisions and the regrouping of
administrative staff scattered throughout the
divisions have reduced staff numbers;
- the implementation of technical
cooperation programmes between developing countries
and transition countries has led to shared costs and
technical assistance;
- the use of retirees, university
students and sabbatical-year researchers has lowered
the need for costly consultants.
Counting all funding sources and duty
stations, FAO's staff has been cut by 158 posts compared
to 1 January 1994. These measures, the fruit of a long
and careful management review and major changes in the
Organization's modus operandi, are to be expanded during
the upcoming biennium and will save the Organization 43
million dollars.
Resource utilization audits have been
reinforced. The first overall audit was carried out in
June and July of 1994 for all of the Organization's field
offices, except in countries with ongoing emergencies,
producing 60 reports during a five-week period. This
novel exercise caught the attention of the "International
Journal of Governmental Auditing" and led the "Internal
Auditor" to write that this was the "fullest internal
audit project ever carried out in the United Nations
system".
Arrangements have also been made for a
monthly audit of financial management in the field
offices by specialized private firms, allowing the FAO
internal auditor to concentrate on Headquarters and the
Regional Offices.
Lastly, the system of dual signatures
on the Organization's accounts has now been extended to
field projects, Regional, Sub- regional and Liaison
Offices, and FAO Representations.
Concerning decentralization:
The Regional Offices have been
reinforced by substantial numbers of experts assigned to
the post. This movement has been slowed in some regions,
however, due to delays caused by refurbishing and work
problems on the premises provided by national
authorities.
Four out of five headquarters of the
Sub-regional Offices have been identified. Two
headquarters agreements have been signed. The remaining
two are being finalized. Appropriate measures will be
taken to solve the delicate problem of the Sub-regional
Office for the Near East which had been earmarked for
North Africa.
All in all, 106 additional
Professional posts have been transferred to the Regional,
Sub-regional and Liaison Offices. Among these, 86 have
been transferred from Headquarters or from former joint
divisions. A total of 31 experts have already reached
their duty stations and the others are soon to follow.
International Programme Officers have
been redeployed to posts corresponding to their
qualifications: appropriate placements have not yet been
found for some. The selection of national Programme
Officers is virtually complete.
The framework paper for the
utilization of national officers/correspondents is now
the topic of internal consultations.
Concerning new programmes:
What we are trying to do is to
re-establish cooperation with external partners and have
greater recourse to national capabilities.
The agreement concerning the
utilization of experts for technical cooperation between
developing countries has been signed by 75 governments
and 3 700 experts have presented their applications. The
comparable agreement for technical cooperation among
countries in transition has been signed by six
governments and 122 experts have been proposed. So far,
14 missions have been organized under these agreements,
but many others are being prepared and there should be a
sharp upswing in the utilization of these experts in
1996.
The cooperation agreement with
institutions of research and learning has been signed by
nine OECD member countries. Four scientific personalities
have already been seconded to the Organization under
these agreements.
Lastly, 38 countries have signed
agreements to promote the use of retired experts. A
sizeable number of retirees have also stated their
willingness to continue working in the service of
development and nearly 70 have already been tapped for
use.
During the upcoming biennium, the
programme to utilize young professionals in the
developing countries, now in the pipeline, will be
implemented.
These organizational changes, carried
out at the same time as FAO's programmes were being
implemented, have required exceptional efforts on the
part of the staff to both effect these transformations
and do their normal work at the same time. I want to take
this occasion to solemnly thank them for their spirit of
abnegation, their skilfulness and their faith in the
Organization and its objectives.
The programmes have suffered, however,
from the budgetary restrictions dictated by the cash flow
situation at FAO.
Training activities planned for
1994-95, for example, have been slashed by 17 percent and
publications by 6 percent as indicated in the Programme
Implementation Report. Selected specific activities have
had to be postponed or even eliminated. I shall cite as
examples the collection of information on fertilizer
production and prices, and a new experimental procedure
in the area of post-harvest losses. The tsetse control
training manuals could not be published. The work which
we were scheduled to do with WHO on zoonoses had to be
eliminated. Implementation of the International Scheme
for Conservation and Rehabilitation of African Lands has
been drastically slowed. Major monthly publications such
as "Food Outlook" and "Food Crops and Shortages" are now
produced only once every two months. We have also had to
publish other statistical yearbooks less frequently. The
work on fishery resource appraisal in the Caribbean had
to be suspended. And lastly, in the forestry sector, the
updated evaluation of forest resources for 1990 had to be
delayed.
Despite this, there have been
substantial achievements during the biennium and I should
like to briefly review them, beginning with the Special
Programme on Food Production in Support of Food Security
in Low-Income Food-Deficit Countries.
After a major programme design effort
with the support of eminent experts, the Special
Programme was launched in October 1994. It is currently
operational in 15 member countries.
Activities preparatory to the
launching of field operations were carried out in all
these countries. This meant fielding exploratory
missions, defining programme activities, establishing the
national programme monitoring and control mechanisms,
forming the national programme formulation teams and
preparing national programmes and plans of operation.
Field activities have been implemented
to take advantage of the farming season in most
countries. In China and Kenya, for example, the national
programme is now in its second farm season, and in seven
other African countries first-season activities are now
under way. In Zambia, Tanzania, Haiti, Bolivia, Papua New
Guinea and Nepal, first- season activities are imminent.
Additionally, a low-cost irrigation component is in place
or in the pipeline in all the countries involved.
I should also like to add that the
donor community has been briefed on all activities linked
to the Special Programme, either through special meetings
in Rome or in the course of periodic meetings in the
participating countries.
Preparations for the World Food
Summit, coordinated by a small Secretariat with staff
seconded from other units, have mobilized the various
components of the Organization. At this time three draft
technical background papers have been distributed and 12
more are to follow by the end of the year or in early
1996. Half are being prepared in collaboration with other
institutions. The structure and content of the General
Policy Document and Plan of Action to be submitted to the
Summit have been reviewed by the Committee on World Food
Security and the Council. A steering committee and
several sub-committees have been set up to ensure the
implementation of all essential preparatory activities:
mobilization of resources, promotional activities for
governments, NGOs, the private sectors and the media, the
logistical and operational aspects, and so forth. As you
know, the Ministerial Meeting in Quebec preparatory to
the Summit was an acknowledged success.
With respect to the Economic and
Social Department, in addition to its regular activities
concerning international agricultural adjustment and the
publication of the annual report "The State of Food and
Agriculture", I should like to point out the publication
of the update study "Agriculture: Towards 2010"; support
to 80 Member Nations in follow-up to the World Food
Conference; the establishment of cooperation linkages
with the new World Trade Organization, particularly in
the area of food standards; and the study of the impact
of the Uruguay Round on the agricultural sector, not to
mention the review of operations of the intergovernmental
groups on commodities.
The Global Information and Early
Warning System for Food and Agriculture (GIEWS), which
has extended its geographic coverage and improved its
methods of work and data dissemination, is still a
cornerstone of FAO's work. In this regard, I should like
to draw your attention to the latest GIEWS projections
that have been reported to you in the documents placed at
your disposal. The outlook for world cereal supply and
demand for 1995-96 has again worsened. World cereal
production in 1995 will be 3 percent lower than last
year. For the third consecutive year, output will
therefore fail to meet demand. Prices are rising and the
margin of security that the carryover stocks represented
has virtually disappeared. World cereal production will
have to increase by at least 5 percent in 1996 if
requirements for 1996-97 are to be met.
I should also like to mention the
progress that has been made in implementing the World
Agricultural Information Centre, which has to collate all
the Organization's statistical and textual data. The FAO
STAT component is operational. The data are accessible to
external users on diskette, the Internet or on-line.
Various databases have been introduced into the FAO INFO
component, such as the Codex Alimentarius standards which
are available on digitalized optical disc.
The extensive restructuring exercise
has affected horizontal activities which are now grouped
under the Sustainable Development Department. However,
the major Remote Sensing, Global Geographic Information
System and Agro-meteorology Programmes, particularly for
surveillance of rainfall and agro-climatic conditions
throughout Africa under the ARTEMIS system, are still
being implemented. The grouping of these three activities
under one service will play a key role in the development
of further environmental monitoring and project
implementation activities, such as FAO's electronic atlas
and the preparation of land-use maps.
The Sustainable Development Department
has also taken over coordination of the Organization's
follow-up activities for the United Nations Conference on
Environment and Development.
The new Women and People's
Participation Division has been particularly active in
implementing the Plan of Action for the Integration of
Women into Agriculture and Rural Development.
Furthermore, it was thanks to FAO's active participation
that rural women were given their due recognition in the
Platform for Action that was adopted by the Fourth World
Conference on Women in Beijing. Similar action in support
of rural populations in general was undertaken for the
Cairo International Conference on Population.
The two other new divisions, the
Research, Extension and Training Division and the Rural
Development and Agrarian Reform Division, have focused on
defining their programmes and methods of work for the
forthcoming biennium, while at the same time pursuing the
activities they inherited from the previous structure.
The EMPRES programme - the Emergency
Prevention System for Transboundary Animal and Plant
Pests and Diseases - has been duly designed and
initiated. The first phase of the desert locust programme
concentrates on the central Red Sea region, while efforts
to control rinderpest serve to bolster the world
eradication programme and its three regional components
in Africa, West Asia and South Asia.
Other important actions have been
successfully concluded:
- the design and preparation of a
global programme for animal genetic resources;
- intensification of activities
regarding plant genetic resources, particularly the
review of the International Undertaking and
preparation of the Fourth International Conference on
Plant Genetic Resources, which is to be held next year
in Germany. Support has been provided for the drafting
of 134 country reports and the organization of 11
sub-regional meetings to ensure the participatory
preparation of the World Report on the State of Plant
Genetic Resources and its accompanying Plan of Action;
- evaluation of water resources and
irrigation potential in Africa, together with the
establishment of a database on rural water use;
- extension of the programme for the
integrated control of crop pests to Africa and Latin
America, in collaboration with the UNDP, World Bank
and UNEP;
- extended deployment of FAO's
Microbanker software to over 600 rural banking
institutions.
As regards forestry, the Organization
has centred on promoting national and international
activities in support of the sustainable exploitation and
conservation of forests and forest resources. Several
meetings have been organized to better define the
strategy needed to dovetail forest conservation and
exploitation and to better understand the role expected
of FAO in this sector. This process culminated with the
first world meeting of ministers responsible for
forestry, who looked exclusively into sustainable forest
development and adopted the Rome Statement on Forestry.
In parallel, FAO issued its first State of the World's
Forests, which will be subsequently issued every two
years. The Forestry Department was also active in helping
many countries to formulate national forestry action
plans.
I close this rapid review of FAO's
technical programmes with the fisheries sector, where I
must of course mention the imminent finalization of the
Code of Conduct on Responsible Fisheries which has been
submitted for your approval. The Organization has also
published its first report on the State of World
Fisheries and Aquaculture, which was submitted to the
meeting of ministers responsible for fisheries which also
took place in March 1995, and which adopted the Rome
Consensus on World Fisheries. Finally, FAO has helped
prepare the International Conference on Sustainable
Contribution of Fisheries to Food Security, which is to
be held in Kyoto in December 1995 at the invitation of
the Government of Japan.
As for the operational activities of
the Technical Cooperation Department, priority has been
placed on building new partnerships. Collaboration with
international financial institutions such as the World
Bank, IFAD and the regional and sub-regional banks, has
been stepped up, as the following examples bear out:
The Investment Centre has formulated
41 projects for the World Bank during the biennium, with
a total investment of more than US$2.5 billion. Another
45 projects are in the pipeline. A further 15 projects
have been formulated for IFAD. The Investment Centre has
also prepared projects in China, Indonesia and Mongolia
for the Asian Development Bank, while others are ongoing
in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Viet Nam. Collaboration
with the Inter-American Development Bank has resulted in
the formulation of two irrigation projects, one in
Bolivia and the other in Nicaragua.
Other projects have been formulated
for potential funding by the West African Development
Bank, the Islamic Development Bank, the African
Development Bank and the Caribbean Development Bank.
Cooperation with a number of
organizations has been strengthened, particularly the
European Union. New cooperation agreements have been
signed with the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation
on Agriculture (IICA).
Cooperation with the United Nations
Development Programme, which for various reasons had
slackened considerably in recent years, is now on the
upturn. Eighteen projects were approved during the first
six months of 1995. It should however be noted that the
UNDP has a certain propensity to implement its own
programmes, which carries the risk of duplication of our
activities.
The Technical Cooperation Programme
received 800 project requests during the course of the
1994-95 biennium, and over 400 were approved, at a value
for this biennium of US$78 million as of late September.
FAO's Field Programme for 1994 alone
represented a total expenditure of US$275 million, thanks
to unchanged overall external financing from Trust Funds.
The operational and normative
activities receive what is often decisive support from
the Legal Office, which has also assisted over 70
countries with their national legislation and with legal
aspects linked to their agricultural development
programmes and to the international accords negotiated by
the Organization.
I should also like to mention the
support service departments which have been closely
involved in the restructuring process, defining the new
functions of units, drafting post descriptions in
collaboration with the technical services and, finally,
taking care of staff transfers. At the same time, work
has continued in refurbishing office facilities and
Headquarters now has an integrated voice/data
communication network.
The number of computerized
workstations has risen considerably, with more powerful
hardware and more effective software installed. These
workstations have access to electronic mail and a wide
range of technical and administrative data.
The Organization is now fully
connected to Internet, which will result in substantial
savings in communications as the decentralized offices
are also being equipped for a two-way link-up with
Headquarters.
We are also looking into ways of using
computer hardware that is still operational but which no
longer corresponds to the Organization's needs, as well
as publications in stock, by distributing them to
developing country administrations, chambers of
agriculture, research centres and training institutes.
Studies have been made on replacing
the Organization's financial management system (FINSYS)
and everything is ready for an invitation to tender for
the procurement - at the beginning of next year if our
resources permit - of an effective system with a
capability that has been proven in an organization with
similar needs to our own. As for replacing the personnel
management system (PERSYS), we are currently examining
the possibilities of using the system recently introduced
at the UN General Secretariat.
Administrative and financial
procedures have been thoroughly scrutinized for
rationalization and simplification. Computerized
administrative forms will be stored electronically, which
will result in substantial savings on paper and storage.
Finally, the procedures for official
international travel have also been carefully reviewed
and clear possibilities for rationalization exist.
I will conclude this overview of what
we have done by mentioning that we have just finished
formulating a global communication policy with the
outside world that will not only introduce a new culture
of information within the Organization, but will also
serve as the basis for the restructuring of the General
Affairs and Information Department. This
decentralization-oriented policy will affect the way we
produce and distribute publications, and maximize the use
of electronic media. This is another area with great
potential.
Much of our work is undertaken in
conjunction with other UN agencies under joint
programmes. But some of our activities are expressly
requested by these agencies, particularly by the General
Secretariat in application of the decisions of the
General Assembly or of the Economic and Social Council.
We are asked to help with their activities or to
participate in inter-agency coordination meetings. I
attach great importance to this cooperation and
coordination which are so essential to avoiding
duplications of effort. However, such coordination is
costly. We have just evaluated it at approximately US$12
million for 1994, excluding coordination at country
office level, a sum equivalent to 5 percent of our
Regular Programme expenditure.
Coming back to our main source of
concern today which is the Programme of Work and Budget
for 1996-97, my proposal during the outline preparation
at the beginning of the year was for a budget with zero
real growth. I made this proposal against my will and
despite the serious challenges facing the Organization,
taking into consideration the tight budgetary imperatives
that now prevail in the current political and economic
climate.
At the time, provisions for increased
costs had been estimated at US$59 million. This was
subsequently brought down to slightly over US$32 million
for the Summary Programme of Work and Budget after
further reductions had been made. The proposal before you
today represents a further downsizing to US$24.7 million.
Our most recent calculations suggest that cost increases
should have been put at US$45 million. The budget of
US$698 million, which has been put before you in
compliance with the guidelines of the Programme and
Finance Committees, represents an increase of only 3.7
percent over the baseline budget for 1994-95, signifying
that FAO will absorb some US$20 million. We also risk
having to absorb further cost increases during the next
biennium on account of salary increments proposed by the
International Civil Service Commission and of
fluctuations in the dollar/lira exchange rate. This will
raise the total amount to be absorbed to over US$28
million.
Finally, I should like to draw your
attention to certain facts that will help put this budget
proposal into its true perspective:
Of all the organizations in the United
Nations system, FAO has had the lowest increase in Member
Nation contributions during the last six years.
None of the governing bodies of UN
agencies whose budgets have recently been approved have
agreed to a sum lower than the nominal value of the
previous budget. On the contrary, some have received
substantial increases. By way of example, the
International Labour Office has had a 24 percent increase
in budget; the International Civil Aviation
Organization's budget will rise by 3.7 to 7.7 percent,
while WHO's has been increased by almost 2.5 percent.
Even the Inter-American Institute for
Cooperation on Agriculture, 60 percent of whose budget is
financed by one of its Member States, will see its
resources unchanged in terms of nominal value.
FAO is your Organization. You, the
Member Nations, have a clear opportunity to lead it to
the success that is so vital to the millions of people
who lack access to sufficient food, and to the millions
of children under the age of five who suffer from protein
and calorie deficiency.
You also have the formidable power to
steer the Organization onto the rocky slopes of funding
uncertainty, incurring the risk of abject failure which
would of course be disastrous for the world's
dispossessed, but would also have dire consequences for
the more comfortably-off inhabitants of the planet.
The Secretariat of the Organization is
your secretariat. It will not engage in demagogy dictated
by economic uncertainty, but will faithfully implement
your decisions to the letter. It will give you all the
information you may need to help you decide and will
advise you with the interests of the Organization, and
those alone, in mind. It will make every effort to act
with transparency, responsibility, foresight,
effectiveness and in respect of legislative provisions.
When you come to take the decisions
that will be so fraught with consequences, think first of
all of those images of starving children and famished
adults that so haunt our consciences.
Think beyond the figures and remember
that there are actions that will affect flesh and blood
people who are suffering from poverty throughout the
world.
Finally, remember that FAO's proposed
budget, designed to help the 800 million desperately poor
people in the world, really corresponds to what nine
developed countries spend to feed their cats and dogs for
only six days.
Think about this and may God guide you
and keep you for the good of Humanity.
