At the recent 25th FAO Regional Conference for Asia and the Pacific in Yokohama (Japan) in September 2000, member governments adopted policy recommendations relevant to the above mentioned core issues. One recommendation to the governments is that they, as well as donor organizations, increase funding for agricultural research and for supporting institutions relevant for small-scale farmers. The second recommendation is that they implement policy reforms that encourage private and public sector participation in economic activities in accordance with their comparative advantages. A third recommendation is to encourage governments to focus on addressing market failures, ensuring competitiveness and quality of support services, protecting the environment and common property resources and promoting balanced regional development. Member countries also adopted a recommendation that urges FAO to assist member countries to develop micro credit programs, extension services, education and marketing support for small scale farmers, especially women, the less skilled and the disadvantaged. To support small scale farmers’ entrepreneurship development FAO was recommended to assist countries in the region to establish clearly defined and enforceable land and property rights and broad based decentralised development of economic activities in rural areas. Of immediate relevance is the request to FAO to provide direct support and capacity building services for carrying out needed agricultural sector reviews, assessment of policies for food security and poverty alleviation and studies on resource pricing policies in such cases as water and irrigation.
The recommendations adopted at the 25th FAO Regional Conference cover also such topics as fisheries, forestry, data collection, assistance to meet the WTO requirements. The Conference encouraged FAO to collaborate with all the relevant organizations in developing national and regional strategies for food security and rural development to ensure coherence and relevance of activities and adequate financial support for its own activities in the region.
The outcome of the FAO Regional Conference has recently been put in to operation as part of the program planning for 2002-03 for the Regional Office of FAO. The Assistant Director General and Regional Representative Mr. R.B. Singh presented a program of work to FAO Headquarters for consolidation of overall FAO world wide activities, which covers a long term period of planning based upon biennial work plans towards 2015 and gives top priority in the region to:
1. Rice based livelihood systems and their role in lessening hunger and rural poverty.
2. Bio-technology, bio-security and bio-diversity: towards an evergreen revolution.
3. Disasters: Early Warning, prevention, preparedness and management.
4. WTO: Capacity building, multilateral trade and an enabling environment.
A regional consultation with the Asian NGOs, farmers’ organizations and representatives from the agricultural cooperatives and rural workers organizations was also held parallel and as an input to the discussions by member governments at the 25th Regional FAO Conference. In September 2001 another regional FAO consultation with the NGO’s will take place in Bangkok. The focus of this meeting will be on the actual outcome of the World Food Summit held in 1996 in Rome and the follow up of the meeting within Asian and Pacific countries.
The FAO Regional Office has a long history of innovative ways of regional and national level collaboration with the Asian NGO’s and private institutions. Two major networks which have a special relationship with FAO are the " Asian Coalition for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development" (ANGOC) representing over 13 Asian NGO country networks and the "Network for Promotion of Agricultural Cooperatives in the Asian and Pacific Region" which represents government agencies and cooperative movements jointly from about 13 Asian and Pacific countries. In partnership with these two networks and many other NGOs and farmers’ and rural workers’ organisations in the region, FAO-RAP supported a broad range of activities to promote sustainable agriculture and rural development at regional and country levels. The Rural Development Section within RAP has been for many years technically responsible for these activities. In fact all technical units of RAP are involved and participate in activities when relevant to them. Today the focal point for FAO-NGO collaboration in RAP is the Policy Unit.
One FAO promoted normative model for government collaboration with NGOs encourages sustainable agriculture, natural resources management, rural development and poverty alleviation. Initiated at the FAO Head Quarters in Rome by the Human Resources Division, this is one out of the annual activities implemented with ANGOC and dates back to 1990. Called the Project Formulation for Peoples Participation in Rural Development Activities, it is still the most valid topic today. The process of dialogue among four government agencies and four NGO representatives led to effective (re) formulation of funding and operations of 19 projects covering community health services, urban poor, cooperatives and self-help groups, small scale fisheries, community forestry and environment and agrarian reform development. What is most relevant is laying the foundation of such a collaboration based upon mutually agreed principles and a detailed framework and mechanism for participatory project formulation for people’s participation in rural development activities, covering the ongoing and new project activities from planning and implementation to monitoring and evaluation.
FAO-RAP has provided member countries’ government agencies and people’s movements active support to promote cooperative development policies and institutional capacity building enabling small-scale farmers to develop viable membership-based agricultural cooperatives. The NEDAC regional network is composed of membership paying members and autonomous entities in the region representing thousands of primary, secondary and tertiary level agricultural cooperatives covering both food and agricultural commodity sectors as well as provision of agricultural support services such as fertilisers, credit and marketing, at regional ministerial conferences and to the International Cooperative Alliance with a regional branch in New Delhi. FAO Rural Development Section in RAP and NEDAC jointly organise regular study seminars and regional level country exchange programs for cooperative leaders, managers and policy decision makers. Member countries include among others China, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Mongolia, and provide a unique platform for policy dialogue and advocacy of favourable agricultural cooperative policies and institutional capacity building for small farmers as viable entrepreneurs in the rural sector. The core issue in the promotion of effective partnership between government agencies and agricultural cooperatives is the recognition by law and effective administrative technical and financial support to promote genuine membership based and managed agricultural cooperative enterprises. Member governments from Vietnam, Thailand and Nepal have requested FAO-RAP technical support and are receiving technical assistance in this area. The FAO Regional Rural Development Unit has organised country level Round Table meetings and Training of Trainers seminars based on a training toolkit on agricultural cooperative development in Thailand, Indonesia and Nepal and currently in Mongolia.
Decentralisation has become a key word in policy debate and formulation of strategies for improving coordination between the public and private institutions for agricultural and rural development. There are many significant opportunities for effective participatory planning and implementation of agricultural and rural development activities, which combine resources, technology and local knowledge of government and private institutions. Yet there are also many pitfalls particularly in terms of regulatory framework for decentralized budget allocation, which generates local institutional resources and capacities and guarantees transparency for all stakeholders. Secondly, leadership and professional skills formation are major challenges in building local government capacities, able to timely and effectively respond to genuine local demands from the rural poor.
The FAO Regional Rural Development Unit has on behalf of the Rural Development Division based in Rome gave priority attention to capacity building of member governments in the field of decentralised participatory planning for sustainable agricultural and natural resources management and poverty alleviation. Recently a training toolkit has been developed in collaboration with the Centre for Integrated Rural Development and the National Institute of Rural Development in India. The first draft of the document, being field tested and thoroughly discussed among experts, is practical and very enriching on normative background developed by FAO and on facts and modalities for participative decentralisation for poverty alleviation applied in the State of Maharashtra in India. Upon request of the member countries, the FAO Rural Development Unit will assist in further development of such training toolkits in Asia-Pacific countries for strengthening capacities of government institutions to establish mechanisms for coordination between public and private institutions to promote sustainable agricultural and rural development. Requests for assistance from the Unit have been received from UNDP in Vietnam and Nepal and assistance has been provided in policy advice on this important topic.
I thank you for your attention to this FAO contribution to this important meeting of APO on changing regional policy dimensions for agricultural and rural development in Asia
