CL 115/INF/22

Council

1. At their Joint Meeting on 23 September, 1998, the Programme and Finance Committees requested that the Secretariat provide to the Council a supplementary information document containing additional elements to facilitate the Council’s consideration of Version 1.0 of the FAO Strategic Framework 2000-2015, presented in document CL 115/12. The elements comprised: an explanation of the rationale for the grouping and sequencing of the proposed corporate strategies and objectives; an updated analysis of the replies to the questionnaire addressed to Members, taking account of returns subsequent to the preparation of CL 115/12; and information on any reactions from partner organizations as may be available closer to the time of the session. In addition, the Committees requested that the Secretariat draft well-focussed, brief vision and mission statements and recommended to the Council that such statements be included in Version 2.0. (Footnote CL 115/19, paras 17-22).

2. The Secretariat presents to the Council, in Part II of the present document, the draft mission and vision statements and supplementary information on the rationale for its proposals in Version 1.0. Part III contains an updated analysis of responses to the questionnaire sent to Members in June, 1998.

3. Canvassing of the views of key external partners, on the other hand, is still at an early stage as comments have been sought on the basis of Version 1.0, which was only available in September, 1998. It has been sent to all UN organizations members of the Administrative Committee on Coordination (ACC), as well as to major inter-governmental and international non-governmental organizations and academic/ research institutions, with which FAO maintains formal or informal collaborative relations (over 350 organizations in total), and to a number of eminent individuals. At the time of finalizing this document for processing, few responses had been received, but a report on those which may have arrived by the time of the Council session will be given orally prior to the discussion of the document. In any case the consultation process will continue throughout the Strategic Framework exercise.

4. The Council will consider the recommendation by the Committees that mission and vision statements be included by the Secretariat in Version 2.0. For the information of the Council, the Director-General presents below a draft statement of mission, values and vision which was originally developed by the Secretariat as part of the internal Strategic Framework preparation process. Following the methodology adopted for the exercise, it was considered important to define the basic values of the Organization, as well as its mission and vision for the future. This internal reflection constituted the first step in the iterative process which led to the proposals for corporate strategies and strategic objectives as well as strategies to address cross-organizational issues. On the basis of those proposals, as finally formulated in the document, the text has now been refined and is consistent with Version 1.0.

5. In fulfillment of the purpose for which the Organization was established (Preamble to the FAO Constitution) and in full respect of its mandate (Article 1 of the Constitution), FAO’s mission is to promote separate and collective action by its Members to:

• eradicate food insecurity and rural poverty;
• ensure an enabling policy and regulatory framework for food and agriculture, fisheries and forestry;
• secure sustainable increases in the supply and availability of food;
• conserve and enhance the natural resource base; and
• generate knowledge on all aspects of food and agriculture, fisheries and forestry, and mobilize the commitment necessary to achieve these purposes.

6. FAO’s field of action touches upon the most basic of human needs and rights, that of access to adequate food, as well as on a crucial sector of the world economy—agriculture, forestry and fisheries. Certain fundamental values underlie the Constitution which Members accept on joining the Organization, and which are enunciated in the Oath of Office by which the staff of the Secretariat is bound:

• Commitment: With broad global membership, the Organization is dedicated to promoting the common welfare through cooperation among nations; integrity and devotion to this ideal are fundamental to service in the Secretariat.
• Independence: The impartiality of the Secretariat, and independence from specific ideological and national perspectives, is key to assisting Members to achieve consensus .
• Partnerships: FAO belongs to a global family of institutions in the United Nations system dedicated to the promotion of international economic and social cooperation and brought into relationship with the United Nations itself under the provision of Article 57 of the Charter, and its staff belong to an International Civil Service loyal to common principles.
• Competence: FAO is expected to be a centre of excellence in its field, and the Secretariat therefore is bound to secure the highest standards of efficiency and technical competence.
• Equity: FAO is committed to the promotion of the full and equal participation of women in development and to the achievement of gender balance in the staff of the Secretariat.
• Diversity: FAO’s strength derives also from respect for diverse approaches and paths to a common destination; its Secretariat therefore recruits personnel on as wide a geographical basis as possible.
• Unity: By coming together in the Organization, nations affirm their belief in the need for collective action and their willingness to take it, and the staff of the Secretariat accepts loyally to carry out the decisions of Members.

7. Aiming always to remain fully responsive to the ideals and requirements of its Members, the Organization will be:

• a centre of excellence and authoritative purveyor of knowledge and advice;
• a unique source of multidisciplinary capacities in the areas of its competence;
• an active partner of organizations, within and also outside the UN system, which share its objectives;
• a well managed, efficient and cost-effective provider of services to its Members;
• a mobilizer of international will and resources to promote agricultural and rural development, and a responsible manager of those resources which are entrusted to it.

RATIONALE FOR GROUPING AND SEQUENCING OF PROPOSALS

8. In formulating the proposals, it was considered essential to clarify the distinction between strategies to achieve the objectives of FAO, and strategies to ensure the continued and strenthened contribution of the Secretariat to the effective pursuit of these objectives. The former are presented in Part II of CL 115/12, as Corporate Strategies A through E, and deal with the substance of FAO's work. The latter are presented in Part III of the document, as Strategies to Address Cross-Organizational Issues, and cover questions of management and quality assurance which affect all of the Organization's programmes.

9. Together, the proposals make up the draft of the Strategic Framework for FAO for the years 2000 to 2015. The Programme and Finance Committees recognized this in suggesting that, while some of the more detailed analysis might be deleted from subsequent versions of the document, the issues in Part III should remain part of the Strategic Framework. The further clarifications below relate to the approaches considered and the reasons for the choices made in formulating the Corporate Strategies in Part II.

10. Several options were considered before settling on the approach used. One would have been to take as the point of departure the disciplinary base of the Organization, or its ongoing programmes as expressed in the Programme of Work and Budget, and project them into the future. The risk of this approach, however, could have been to close off avenues of reflection and innovation and thus to perpetuate the status quo in a rapidly evolving external environment.

11. Another approach would have been to use as an organizing principle the overall development goals of Members, as expressed, for example, in the World Food Summit Plan of Action. This also could have been misleading. Many of the specific measures called for by the Plan of Action are outside the mandate and competence of the Organization, and defining objectives for which successful achievement depends almost entirely on the contribution of others would have meant that the impact of FAO’s own actions might have been too diluted to be measured.

12. It was therefore considered necessary to define major thrusts for FAO’s work in the coming years in a manner broad enough to relate them to the real challenges which the international community faces but at the same time sufficiently circumscribed to allow for clear definition of strategies to implement them, and later on for the identification of specific projects and corresponding resource allocations.

13. Each of the five corporate strategies (A through E) has been designed to constitute a response by FAO to one such challenge, seen in terms of Members’ goals, external factors and internal capacities. Definition of the challenges started from the analysis of the likely developments in the external environment, used as a mediating principle the Organization’s mandate and comparative advantages, and tested the resulting hypotheses against the goals defined and the strategies proposed by the FAO departments. The result was then compared to the responses to the questionnaire to Members.

14. Within the five strategies, twelve strategic objectives were formulated, aggregating departmental strategies and indicating in each case the partnerships—internal and external—necessary for implementation.

15. The basic principles underlying the approach taken in formulating corporate strategies and strategic objectives were:

• inter-disciplinarity, to address multi-sectoral issues through the mobilization of contributions from all relevant disciplines within the Organization, and
• partnership, both among FAO units—at Headquarters and in the decentralized offices—and with governments, other organizations and civil society.

16. The descriptions contained in the document are self-explanatory, and the notes below therefore concentrate only on the rationale for the strategies and grouping of the strategic objectives within them.

17. All analyses carried out by the Secretariat in preparing the proposals converged on the conclusion that meeting the global target set by the World Food Summit will require special efforts by, and on behalf of, those countries where the problems are greatest. Generally, these are countries with a high incidence of chronic undernutrition, but they also include countries vulnerable to or suffering the effects of disasters and humanitarian crises, which are important causes of food insecurity.

18. This strategy would target efforts to assisting such countries, with the aim of making a significant contribution to countering several of the most preoccupying trends arising from the analysis of the external environment—the persistence of poverty, the widening of the gap between the affluent and the poor, a concern that there will be continued or even exacerbated inequality among countries in access to the benefits of economic and technological progress, and the continued risk of disaster-related and complex emergencies. The strategic objective covering emergencies was included in this Corporate Strategy because, although it addresses problems which are generally caused by specific events and in some cases may be transitory, it nevertheless involves targeted action to assist particular countries and population groups facing food insecurity and loss of livelihoods.

19. Another point of convergence in the analyses was on the crucial importance of international and domestic policy and regulatory frameworks for food and agriculture, in an increasingly inter-dependent and globalized world economy. The strategy thus reposes on the foundation of the Organization’s long-established work in this area, within its own mandate and in cooperation with other organizations, but recognizes also the growing demand by individual countries for assistance in developing their domestic policy, regulatory and standard-setting capacities.

20. Many such countries are or will be in the "middle income" group, which may be less reliant on the international community for traditional forms of technical assistance but will look to FAO for a specific expertise and experience which is not easily available from others and which the Organization is uniquely placed to provide. Because of the specificity of the questions addressed and the approaches required, it was considered desirable to have a separate focussed strategy in this area.

21. Ensuring the required increases in supply and availability of food to meet the needs and changing requirements of growing and increasingly urbanized populations implies that the demands on the agriculture, fisheries and forestry sectors will change, and requires that countries make the appropriate strategic choices. At the same time, one of the persistent problems faced in the developing world is the gap between yields obtained in research stations and those obtained in farmers’ fields. Action to close the gap, identify appropriate agricultural practices and remove constraints to their application could make a major difference not only to supply and availability of food but also to producers'incomes, particularly in Low Income, Food Deficit Countries.

22. The thrust of this strategy is thus on enhancing policy and institutional frameworks to guide sectoral development, taking into account changes in the role and functions of the state and the importance of private initiative, and on promoting adoption of appropriate technologies and practices for sustainable intensification of production systems.

23. The major challenge which this strategy addresses is safeguarding the sustainability of the world’s food production systems. While there is a logical, and fully justified link between this work and that envisaged under Strategy C, they have been formulated as separate strategies in order to give appropriate recognition and weight to the twin necessities of producing and ensuring availability of enough food for the present (Strategy C), and of conserving the resources on which future generations will depend (Strategy D).

24. These need not be seen as incompatible goals, but the different nature of the work involved, and the different partnerships necessary to achieve the desired results, suggested that separate strategies would permit a more incisive definition of problems and proposed solutions. For fisheries and forestry, in particular, a combination of Strategies C and D might send the wrong signal regarding the Organization's commitment to resource conservation.

25. All three strategic objectives contributing to this corporate strategy have received the highest degree of support from Members, and in fact the only question raised has been whether or not the third element—promoting a central place for food security on the international agenda—belongs under E or should be moved to Strategy A because it deals with food security.

26. Strategy A has been formulated as an FAO response to the need to assist those countries where extraordinary efforts must be made if the Summit target is to be reached. In different ways, Strategies B, C and D would also contribute to the achievement of various objectives in the World Food Summit Plan of Action, and thus also to food security.

27. However, it needs to be recalled that the Summit committed all countries to ensuring food security for their peoples, and called upon many actors in addition to FAO to assist in reaching its goals. FAO’s main contribution to this broader effort is in information dissemination, advocacy, facilitation of inter-agency cooperation and monitoring of progress through the CFS. These activities are covered under a Strategic Objective which appeared most amenable to inclusion as E.3 because all work under Strategy E is addressed to the entire membership and to the international community at large, and relies on similar means of action at the global level (information, analysis, advocacy).

28. The sequencing proposed for the five Corporate Strategies did not represent an order of priority. If anything, it appeared to represent a logical progression; the sequence begins with the specific response to an urgent problem, identified by the World Food Summit; it proceeds to three Strategies (B, C and D) addressing different facets of crop, livestock, fisheries and forestry management and development; it concludes with the strategy to address the global community.

29. Obviously, the sequence could be re-ordered or otherwise revised, particularly if the Council considers that the grouping of strategic objectives should be changed. The Secretariat therefore looks forward to receiving the Council's guidance before proceeding to the preparation of Version 2.0.