全球粮食安全与营养论坛 (FSN论坛)

该成员提交的意见和建议涉及：

    • On the sidelines of the 47th plenary of the CFS, the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data together with the Indonesian Government and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation co-hosted a side event on Data for Food Security and Nutrition: Taking forward the CFS data workstream.

      The discussions touched on the central role of multi-stakeholder partnerships, the importance of national context and inclusion of local people, the increasing need for data sharing and integration, and the tension between the value of open data and potential risks to privacy and data protection.

      We hope that the discussion offers a useful contribution to the HLPE as it works toward actionable recommendations for improving the data needed for food systems transformation.

      Here we share our key takeaways from the event:

      1. Multi-stakeholder partnerships are central in catalyzing and supporting data-driven decision-making towards the goal of zero hunger. Gallup’s Andrew Rzepa reflected that ensuring that everyone is counted is a massive undertaking and no organization will be able to do it alone. A recent survey by the United Nations and the World Bank showed that a majority of National Statistical Offices have developed partnerships to address interruptions to routine data collection caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. They have established partnerships to access new data sources (69%), to implement new methods for data collection (68%) and to access and use new technology (56%).  Governments are recognising the need for robust national data ecosystems and have been partnering across sectors.
         
      2. Agricultural data systems must take into account national contexts and capacities. The global community needs to place more attention on improving the production, analysis, and use of food and agricultural data, to support collective action in this area.

        Indonesia offers an interesting example here, with their success in adopting a Single Data Policy for joining up data across agencies. Dr. I Ketut Kariyasa reflected on how this approach has enabled the Ministry of Agriculture to integrate different data sources, establish standards for comparability and produce timely and accurate data that are fed into their ‘Agriculture War Room’. This serves as a control center for decision-making and monitoring on agricultural policies and food security. He stressed that investing in strong nationally-owned data systems that engage local knowledge is essential in supporting greater efficiency and more effective targeting of policies and programs.
         

      3. Data sharing and integration is becoming more important than ever. FAO’s Pietro Gennari emphasized that an analytical approach to sustainable food systems means bringing together data on many different aspects from different sources. Innovation in the area of geo-localisation can be a powerful instrument for linking data across different sources to provide new insights such as by overlaying health, food and environment data sources to understand food systems interactions in a particular region or community. Yet this also has implications for data protection.
         
      4. Data collection and use at the local level must be inclusive and not extractive; ensuring that the views, experiences and rights of the most vulnerable are considered and included.

        Action Aid’s Sesheeni Joud Selvaratnam reflected that many civil society organisations are aiming to empower communities through the process of data collection, analysis and use. These approaches and those led by government and international organizations need to close the feedback loop, so that communities can use data in their daily decisions around planting, harvesting, and feeding their families. In particular, small-holder farmers and women should participate in the development of protocols on data collection and use to ensure that the insights generated meet their needs.
         

      5. There are deep running tensions between the value of open data and potential risks to privacy and concerns around data ownership. FAO’s Pietro Gennari acknowledged this tension and reflected on the longstanding principles governing statistics that ensure confidentiality as well as the many technical tools for anonymization and legal parameters that are in place to prevent data misuse. 

        Another important dimension here is debates about bias and equity in the use of digital technologies. Speakers underlined the importance of triangulation and ground-truthing data from new digital tools and methods against more robust surveys and census data. The pandemic has shown us the value of these new methods to get data for immediate decision-making. However, it has also highlighted that we can’t do away with these more robust sources to help us understand and adjust for shortcomings in the data.

      We are grateful to speakers who participated in the discussion: Pietro Gennari, Chief Statistician of the FAO, Dr. Martin Cole, Chairperson of the High-Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) Steering Committee, Professor José María Sumpsi Viñas, Member of the HLPE Steering Committee, Sesheeni Joud Selvaratnam, International Programme and Policy Lead at ActionAid, Dr. I Ketut Kariyasa, Director (ad interim), Centre for Data and Information Systems, Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture, Andrew Rzepa, Partner, Gallup. 

      Please visit our blog for more information about this discussion and its key takeaways.