FAO supports joint financing efforts for building back better

FAO engagement in the coordination efforts for the upcoming 2021 Financing for Sustainable Development Report (FSDR) remains strong. On 9 October 2020, the FAO Director-General, Qu Dongyu, and Deputy Director-General, Beth Bechdol, participated in the Inter-agency Task Force on Financing for Development, chaired by UN-DESA Under-Secretary General, Liu Zhenmin, where they discussed FSDR, as well as the overall joint work on financing solutions for sustainable development.

Presenting on behalf of the Director-General, who had to leave earlier, Deputy Director-General Beth Bechdol noted that the COVID-19 pandemic, the extraordinary measures that have been adopted to suppress it, and the subsequent economic impacts that have been brought about because of it, have all exposed significant vulnerabilities in many contemporary food systems. Such vulnerabilities represent a threat to food security and nutrition by possibly exacerbating inequalities with regard to accessing healthy diets.

FAO also highlighted the importance of increasing agricultural productivity to guarantee food security, climate resilience, and adaptation, through innovation and technology enhancements. Furthermore, the important role of continued investments in food loss and waste was underlined as key to addressing food insecurity and nutrition deficiencies.

FAO reiterated the organization’s commitment to engaging with the private sector on projects that align with the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), and especially the SDG2 of Zero Hunger. “This may involve some amount of resource mobilization, but it is important for us to look to the private sector for providing data, innovation and other technologies, which will bring the needed transformation to agri-food systems,” said Bechdol.

Upon that, it was suggested that it would be useful to include in the 2021 FSDR concrete examples of countries that have taken innovative approaches in transforming food and agriculture systems to improve food security and nutrition, and accelerate progress towards achieving the SDGs.