Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

Virtual event, 28/05/2020 - 28/05/2020

As countries ease lockdown measures, a new set of challenges emerges for food production, processing, and logistics of supply chains. Some of these can provide opportunity for growth, given that policy-makers and value chain actors play their part. To mitigate COVID-19 impacts and to open new opportunities, countries need practical solutions on a range of issues including food supply, food and nutrition security, trade and markets.

The FAO webinar entitled “Lifting lockdowns – what next for food systems?” should serve as a platform for information sharing among countries and partners to address impacts of COVID-19 and challenges in the food and agriculture sector of Europe and Central Asia.

Please register to follow the virtual event through the Zoom conferencing platform, simultaneous interpretation in Russian is provided. The webcast will be streamed live on YouTube in English.

Opening Remarks

Vladimir Rakhmanin

FAO ADG and Regional Representative for Europe and Central Asia

Speakers

Maximo Torero 

Chief Economist, 

FAO

Khatia Tsilosani

Deputy Minister,

Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture, Georgia

Taras Kachka 

Deputy Minister,

Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food, Ukraine

Arman Khojoyan

Deputy Minister

Ministry of Economy, Armenia

Paulo Gouvei

Chief Policy Advisor

Copa Cogeca

4 June, 15:00 - 16:15 CEST 

In the context of the gLOCAL week, the evaluation offices of  FAO, IFAD and WFP with the support of EvalForward are organizing an online learning event on innovative methods and approaches in evaluation, and on how innovations can provide lessons for progress under SDG2 “End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture”.



During the event participants will be able to join one of the below parallel sessions and discuss with their peers. Main takeaways from the sessions will be shared with the plenary.

Key note by Masahiro Igarashi

Director of FAO Office of Evaluation and Chair of the United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG)

Parallel sessions:

1. Innovative approaches and tools for evaluation. 

This session will discuss approaches that evaluation can adopt in times of crisis and present practical methods and tools such as remote sensing and synthesis, and more.

Speakers: Hansdeep Khaira (IFAD) and Carlos Tarazona (FAO)



2. Learning from experience: Community-driven development approaches and innovations.

This session will illustrate how evaluations contribute to knowledge and learning, using the cases of the evaluation synthesis on community-driven development (CDD) approaches and  the corporate-level evaluation on innovations in IFAD.

Speakers: Johanna Pennarz (IFAD) and Maximin Kouessi Kodjio (IFAD) 



3. Going visual in a virtual world: how visualization is bringing greater engagement to evaluation discussions.

Recent experiences in using visual tools for presenting and discussing evaluation work that can be also used in virtual settings will be presented, with examples from Bangladesh, Laos and Myanmar.

Speakers: Yumiko Kanemitsu (WFP) and Keisuke Taketani (facilitation and visualisation expert)

Register for the event here: https://fao.zoom.us/j/97262395101

Following the event, participants will receive all material being discussed and shared.

The Global Forest Observations Initiative (GFOI) has launched a portal - the first such comprehensive platform - to track international capacity development support to developing countries in forest monitoring for climate action.

The portal - the GFOI Inventory of Activities - is a one-stop shop with easy-to-access information on more than 400 forest monitoring activities in 70 developing countries across Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean. Users can search for information by country or region, by type of forest monitoring activities, and by donors.

"Collecting and disseminating better information on forests is vital for countries and the international community's efforts to take targeted and effective action on climate change," said Hiroto Mitsugi, FAO Assistant Director-General for Forestry.

The portal will help governments and donors identify gaps, share resources, avoid overlaps and explore opportunities for new partnerships to better address the challenges countries face as they develop their National Forest Monitoring Systems.

The portal displays information from the world's leading forest monitoring development partners, including national governments, development practitioners, space agencies and forestry experts.

It is an example of successful collaboration and open information sharing, which is essential in an era of global climate change as big geospatial data and other diverse and usable information becomes increasingly available.

You can access the portal here: http://www.fao.org/gfoi/activities?utm_source=all&utm_medium=all&utm_campaign=GFOI%20Inventory%20of%20Activities

EVAL-ForwARD is a new Community of Practice on evaluation for Food Security, Agriculture and Rural Development, jointly promoted by the evaluation offices of the Rome-based agencies: CGIAR (formerly known as the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research), FAO, IFAD and WFP.

Its first public launch took place at EvalColombo2018 during the side event The role of Evaluation in the public sector: how best to support national capacities. Conference participants had the opportunity to engage with the Directors of the Evaluation offices of FAO, IFAD and WFP on the aims, opportunities and thematic focus of this initiative.

The objectives of EVAL-ForwARD are to enhance awareness and capacities at country-level about evaluation in the agriculture, food security and rural development sectors, with a close focus on the evaluation of efforts to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 2 – End Hunger.

Evaluators, development practitioners, researchers and government officials are welcome to join the Community of Practice and:

• Exchange evaluation information, practice and knowledge;
• Propose resources and blogs;
• Post information about events, conferences, training opportunities.

The first EVAL-ForwARD webinar on Evaluating with a Sustainable Development Goal 2 lens: experiences to date is planned for the second half of October and aims to uncover the challenges encountered and the good practices on which the development community could build, fostering further discussion and exchanges on the topic, which is at the core of the Community’s mandate.

EVAL-ForwARD uses a Dgroup mailing list for knowledge-sharing and a website as a repository of information and resources. To sign up to the Community and to find out more, please visit: www.evalforward.org

The new IPC Global platform offers a cleaner design, more flexibility in terms of structure and strengthens the access and exchange of information on IPC. It consists of two main portals:

1. About IPC and Partnerships that gives you access to information on IPC implementation both at global and country level, upcoming events, key resources and featured stories;
2. A dedicated IPC Analysis Portal that gives you access to all IPC analyses released by the countries adopting the IPC classification for analyzing acute and chronic food insecurity, and acute malnutrition through a custom action filter and interactive map.