FAO, for the first-time ever, held country-level consultations with its national partners and stakeholders prior to its Regional Conferences (RCs) with the goal of further strengthening their engagement and alignment with the agency’s regional priorities.

The RCs are an important component of FAO’s governing policy. At the RCs, FAO’s overall policies and regulatory frameworks are defined and its Strategic Framework, Medium-Term Plan, and programme of work and budget are established. The RCs also contribute towards the oversight of the administration of the organization. The pre-RC country level consultation is the initiative of Dr Qu Dongyu, FAO’s new Director-General, to ensure continuous communication and engagement between FAO Member States and its Regional Offices.

Specifically, the country level consultations aims to increase national partners’ understanding and appreciation of the RCs, foster greater ownership and buy-in of its outcomes, and share FAO’s work and experiences on specific regional priorities and areas of technical focus, among others.

In line with this, FAO-Philippines held its country level consultation with its national partners on 15 January 2020 in preparation for the 35th FAO Asia-Pacific Regional Conference (APRC), which will be held in Bhutan. The event was very well participated-in by a diverse mix of stakeholders representing government agencies, civil society organizations (CSO), the private sector, and FAO-Philippines country office.

Government agencies represented included the Department of Agriculture (DA), Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), Department of Science and Technology Food and Nutrition Research Institute (DOST-FNRI), Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), Climate Change Commission (CCC), Philippine Commission on Women (PCW), Senate Economic Planning Office (SEPO), Congressional Policy and Budget Research Department (CPBRD), and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Agrarian Reform of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM-MAFAR). CSOs at the event included the Asian NGO Coalition for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ANGOC), Philippine Partnership for the Development of Human Resources in Rural Asia (PhilDHRRA), Asian Farmers Association for Sustainable Rural Development (AFA), and the Pambansang Kilusan ng mga Samahang Magsasaka (PAKISAMA).

Ms. Xiangjun Yao, newly appointed FAO Representative ad interim in the Philippines, Mr. David Dawe, Senior Policy Officer based at FAO’s Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (RAP), and other FAO-Philippines country office staff presented and facilitated discussions on the major topics and sections to be covered at the APRC, including the special APRC events on Digital Agriculture and Innovation and the recently launched FAO flagship Hand-in-Hand Initiative (HiHi).

The participants highly appreciated the consultation arrangement and highlighted a number of issues based on the presentations. These included, among others, implementing robust M&E system for the agricultural sector, mainstreaming gender and climate change action in the FAO priority regional programs, leveraging social protection systems to make economic growth more nutrition-sensitive, promoting technical synergy between FAO and other organizations with similar mandates, building consensus among farmers on smart agriculture, maximizing use of “big data” for sustainable agriculture, developing and aligning national and regional strategies for digital agriculture, increasing the use of ICT (e.g. drones) for more efficient disaster management and response, tapping legislation to promote FAO’s work in the country and in the region, continuing work on AMR, food safety, and transboundary diseases, and conducting regular consultation and meetings among country level stakeholders for better inclusivity in the FAO regional priorities.

The discussions and findings of FAO-Philippines’ country level consultations will be integrated in a report, which will be used inform the high-level discussions at the 35th APRC in Bhutan.