(Item 10 of the Agenda)
(Item 10a of the Agenda)
96. Document APCAS/08/12 "Forestry in Sarawak" was introduced to the Commission by Ms Salina Hamdi of the Forest Department of Sarawak. It was informed that the Ministry of Planning and Resource Management was responsible for the formulation of policies on forestry. The Forest Department in Sarawak was responsible for the identification and protection of the forest reserves, protected forest, communal forest, national park, natural reserves and wildlife sanctuary. It had the authority to regulate production and export of logs from the state, and to impose and collect royalties, fees and other payments. Furthermore, the Department was authorized to issue licences and permits under the Forest Ordinance (1958), National Parks and Nature Reserve Ordinance (1998) and Wildlife Protection Ordinance (1998). The Department was also tasked to promote the economic utilization of forest produce, protect and preserve endangered wildlife resources of the State and conduct research on the conservation, management and utilization of forest resources.
(Item 10b of the Agenda)
97. Document APCAS/08/13 "Implementation and Perspectives of CountrySTAT in the Asia and Pacific Region" was introduced to the Commission by Mr Robert Mayo. The Commission was informed that CountrySTAT was designed as an integrated national food and agricultural statistical information system ensuring harmonization of national data and metadata collections for analysis and policy-making. The web based system was using common international standards and frameworks, i.e., FAOSTAT, Genetic Algorithm Utility Library (GAUL) and Statistical Data and Metadata Exchange (SDMX). In the APCAS region, CountrySTAT was integrated with the RDES, had been successfully implemented in the Philippines and was being implemented in Bhutan.
98. The Commission noted that an important objective of the CountrySTAT model was the establishment of a nationally owned and maintained information system capable of providing quality statistics on food and agriculture in a structured format. CountrySTAT provided the vehicle for promoting evidence-based technical, political and financial decision-making. The Commission was advised that CountrySTAT should promote strong partnership with national statistical offices and other statistical authorities to enhance capacity building.
99. The Commission was apprised that since 2005, CountrySTAT was being developed by the FAO Statistics Division in technical collaboration with Statistics Sweden which provided the PC-Axis Software Family, the information dissemination technology implementing the CountrySTAT. The datasets of CountrySTAT maintained statistics and indicators by time periods and geographic areas to monitor conditions and performance of the food and agriculture sector. The FAO Statistics Division decided to develop a simplified food balance sheet methodology to be integrated into CountrySTAT in order to provide a data analysis tool to an erstwhile pure provision of raw statistical information.
100. The Commission noted that CountrySTAT provided capacity building to partners at each step of implementation. The Commission was informed that in the APCAS region, Bhutan was currently in the initial phase of implementation, where the application was enriched to respond to the national needs, and main players were introduced to the application. The exercise in the Philippines had entered an advanced phase involving dissemination and sub-national advocacy strategy. The Commission further noted that a regionalized version of CountrySTAT had been adopted for demonstration under the RDES. The Commission was, however, cautioned that the statistical information workflows from the countries to the CountrySTAT for RDES and the subsequent back-end harmonization of datasets would require more work in methodological development for which cooperation of the countries would be necessary.
101. The Commission was pleased that under RDES a user manual for CountrySTAT had been developed and published for use by both administrators and end-users. The Commission expressed concern that no decision had yet been made on which institution would be mandated to own the RDES System and maintain gathered statistics and indicators.
(Item 10c of the Agenda)
102. Document APCAS/08/14 "Towards a Simplified Food Balance Sheet" was presented to the Commission by Mr Robert Mayo. The Commission was informed that since the 1940s the FAO was preparing the Food Balance Sheets (FBS) on regular intervals. The FBS aimed to present a comprehensive picture of the pattern of a country's food supply and utilization during a specified reference period.
103. The Commission noted that the FBS was serving as a useful tool for monitoring the national food supply, providing valuable data sets for both intra- and inter-country comparisons of food consumption. The FBS, when compiled regularly, could also reveal the extent to which the food supply of the country would be adequate in relation to nutritional requirements. The Commission was also apprised that by bringing together the larger part of the food and agricultural data, FBS would also be useful in the detailed appraisal of the food situation in a country. The Commission noted that only a few member countries were currently compiling the FBS in the region.
104. The Commission was cautioned that FBS had some limitations such as the quantities of food available for human consumption, as FBS estimates could be higher than the amount of food actually consumed. Moreover, the FBS would not give any indication of the differences that might exist in the diet consumed by different population groups nor on seasonal variations in the total food supply. The Commission was advised that in order to get a complete picture, food consumption surveys showing the distribution of the national food supply at various times of the year among different groups of the population should be conducted. The Commission was likewise advised that the recommendations of FAO back in 1946, expressing that: (a) member governments prepare FBS to a uniform pattern; (b) FAO provide direct assistance to governments which find it difficult to prepare FBS; (c) to promote comparability in the presentation of food consumption data in terms of calories and nutrients, FAO should continue its work on food composition tables and make the same available to governments for use in the preparation of FBS; and (d) FBS be published as soon as possible, still held.
105. The Commission was advised that the accuracy of FBS, which were in essence derived statistics, would depend on the reliability of the underlying basic statistics of population, supply and utilization of food and of their nutritive value. These varied among countries, both in terms of coverage and accuracy. In addition, the Commission was informed that in most cases, the assumptions for waste used in FBS were based on expert opinion obtained in the countries. It was important that this country-specific information be provided to FAO.
106. Commodity Balance Sheets (CBS) were also introduced to the Commission. It was informed that these were the elementary framework for analysis of the food situation of a country or groups of countries. The Commission was informed that FAO was maintaining a Commodity Balance database (XCBS) with balance sheet structured data for major commodities in the following groups: cereals, dairy, meat, oil bearing crops, sugar, tropical beverages, bananas and citrus.
107. The Commission welcomed the efforts of FAO to simplify the compilation of the FBS. It was pleased to know that moves were been taken to reduce the list of commodities for most developing countries in order to diminish the burden of data compilation and calculations associated with FBS. The Commission was informed that a simplified FBS with 20-30 items in place of the currently more than 900 commodities would, for many countries, account for 90-95 percent of calories available for consumption.
108. As there were only few member countries that had sufficient experience in compiling the FBS, the Commission sought clarification on the procedures for compiling the FBS, particularly with respect to the estimation of the nutrient equivalents of specific agricultural food commodities. FAO committed to address these concerns with possible technical assistance to countries needing such help.
(Item 10d of the Agenda)
109. Document APCAS/08/15 "Gender Statistics for Agricultural and Rural Development in the Asia-Pacific Region: Past Perspectives and Future Prospects" was presented to the Commission by Mr John Curry. It was informed that most gender statistical work focused on issues such as population, health, education, formal and informal employment, gender-based violence, political participation and time-use. However, the gender dimension of agricultural statistics was often neglected by both agricultural statisticians and gender statistics specialists.
110. The Commission was informed that for nearly twenty years, FAO responded to this data gap in both agricultural and gender statistics through collaboration of two of its divisions (Gender, Equity and Rural Employment Division (ESW) and the Statistics Division (ESS)) with national statistical systems in member countries. The collaboration aimed to build capacity at national level by providing training and technical support in gender and statistics for ministries of agriculture and central statistics offices. Much of the work varied in scope and intensity across global regions and occurred within the framework of both the WCA Programme and the changing context of dominant analytical approaches to gender in development studies.
111. The Commission noted that the current Gender and Development (GAD) perspective was a progression in thinking from a focus on Women in Development (WID), where women's practical/basic needs or economic empowerment were specially targeted. GAD now was taking into account the division of work and benefits between women and men.
112. FAO's statistical work within the GAD perspective had included: (a) production of technical guidelines and training materials for gender and statistics to support data production and use; (b) sensitization and training of both producers and users (actual or potential) in gender issues, concepts and tools for the production, analysis and use of sex-disaggregated data; (c) technical support to agricultural censuses/surveys in gender principally within the framework of technical support to the WCA; (d) recoding and re-tabulation of existing data to produce sex-disaggregated data sets, especially for use in policy decision-support provided by FAO; and (e) preparation of sex-disaggregated data sets, for inclusion in larger databases such as FAOSTAT.
113. The Commission was reminded that in the 1994 Session of APCAS, two papers focused on advocacy and guidelines for improving the visibility of women in agricultural statistics. One discussed the alternative data sources for women's work in agriculture and the other showed that statistics on women could be derived from agricultural censuses and surveys. It was also mentioned that in 1999, a study on gender database for agriculture and resource management policies was made covering three Pacific Island Countries (Fiji, Vanuatu and Western Samoa).
114. A sensitisation workshop on gender-disaggregated data and indicators (GDD) was conducted in India in 2004 in collaboration with the Centre for Studies on Gender Concerns in Agriculture, and the Kerala Agricultural University. It aimed to promote greater understanding of the importance of gender disaggregated data analysis in gender-sensitive agricultural development planning.
115. The Commission noted that FAO's technical support to gender and agricultural statistics primarily consisted of country-specific studies of gender-disaggregated census data. Among member countries, China, Malaysia, Myanmar and Viet Nam were cited.
116. The Commission was apprised that FAO's advocacy to promote gender factors in agricultural statistics within the GAD framework was mainly reflected in the two WCA programme cycles (2000 and 2010). Gender had been included in the list of themes for supplementary survey in the WCA 2010 census recommendations. Moreover, gender items in the minimal core data items are the sex and age of the holder to allow for tabulation and cross-tabulation of relevant gender issues with other features of the recommended core census data set. New concepts in the 2010 round, such as sub-holders, could help reveal the contribution of both women and men to agriculture thereby, adding value to the policy relevance of agricultural statistics.
117. The Commission noted that some member countries had conducted country-specific studies on WID and GAD and that they were willing to share these with FAO. In addition, member countries also shared that in many national surveys, such as labour force or wage surveys, the survey instruments would have at least the sex of the respondents or members of households that would allow gender analysis. However, very few countries were doing such analysis on regular basis. The Commission also noted that a common feature of time-use studies was a special focus on time management especially among women. These studies could also provide an avenue for more in-depth gender analysis.
118. The Commission welcomed plans for the inclusion of the gender dimension in CountrySTAT. Moreover, indicator systems in a few countries had incorporated a module on gender in agriculture. Statistical service staff in member countries would, however, need assistance to increase their capacity to undertake gender analysis.
