C44 SIDE EVENT South-South Cooperation for Food and Nutrition Security Opening Remarks

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am so pleased to be here for this important side event on South-South and Triangular Cooperation.

I remember, many years ago, Brazil, China, and Indonesia started South-South Cooperation. These three countries started to support Africa and then others with China providing further support in Asia and Latin America, with Brazil supporting Latin America and Africa, and Indonesia in the 1980s also supporting Africa.

However, now it is time for all of us to strengthen multilateralism to support each other among the Global South. All the experience from Brazil, China, Indonesia and even Viet Nam, Thailand, or even Mexico, can be shared with other Members. Therefore, I have really promoted South-South Cooperation in the past years.

Last year was of critical importance for injecting new dynamics because the G20 Presidency led by President Lula - a highly respected politician globally – launched the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, signed by 82 world leaders.

FAO is proud to host the Alliance’s Supporting Mechanism, coordinated by the FAO South-South and Triangular Cooperation Division.

We look forward to expanding our collaboration to include other countries such as Japan, South Korea, India and the Russian Federation, who have come forward to commit their support, as well as all other Members who wish to engage.

We need to all work together, that is the real game-changer!

I also want to highlight training. Through South-South Cooperation we need to expand training to the Global South on agrifood systems and rural development policy.

Enabling policies are key for the Global South, and they need to be localized and specific. The North has many established policies to share, and that is why I also encourage cross-continent cooperation across Asia, Near East and Africa starting with one country, one commodity.

Next week the FAO Assistant Director-General (ADG) and Regional Representative for Asia and the Pacific will hold a workshop using the Vietnamese example because they also had a similar approach to that of China namely a national target programme called “One Commune One Product”, with the same acronym as the FAO One Country One Priority Product (OCOP) and they did very well.

Lastly, I want to talk about marketing, which is critical. Through the OCOP a national branding was established and from that we can really recognize each other through the FAO network. Bilateral trading is very complicated but through the FAO network we said 1+n, from each Member and through the South-South Cooperation you can recognize each other. From there, we can share the market together – that’s the third issue.

Last is transboundary diseases. Deputy Director-General Beth Bechdol is responsible for plant disease, but we also have animal disease under the responsibility of Deputy Director-General Magwenzi. So, to address transboundary diseases we need to also strengthen cooperation among the Global South.

I just had a meeting with the Minister from the Netherlands, to see if they are willing to offer their technical assistance and resources, together with the United States and others. It does not necessarily need to be rich countries, but also those form the Global South because transboundary diseases are not only limited to your own territory. Diseases never respect your boundaries.

So, I will stop here and wish you all a good discussion, good collaboration and enjoy the special agricultural products. We import the mangoes from Thailand, and Thailand imports potatoes from China, and China imports coffee from Brazil and maybe Brazil imports tea from China!  

In agriculture we should share, we should complement each other, not only talk about competing. At FAO, we aim to create a complimentary culture.

For example, in the United States they have good soya bean and maize and fish, but in Mississippi they don’t eat Chinese carp however one day when I retire, I will go to the Mississippi State University, and we will make the Chinese dried fish there! This is a shared culture!

Thank you very much.