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Action plans for collaborative stakeholder action plans on Food Security currently being developed include the ones listed below. For more detailed information and if you are interested to join into partnerships on these issues, please contact Claire Rhodes, Issue Coordinator for Food Security, crhodes@earthsummit2002.org.
Capacity Building for Sustainable Agriculture: the expansion of successful agricultural practice programmes a) Expansion of CropLife’s AgLe@rn Initiative – a web-based educational tool. Accelerate the global outreach of agLe@rn to developing countries in Africa and Latin America, enabling more agricultural professionals to capitalize upon the educational opportunities offered, ultimately leading to improved knowledge and information flows to resource poor farmers.
A very constructive side-event held at PrepCom 4. A series of presentations by partners of the initiative was followed by a professionally facilitated discussion on both the positive and negative aspects of the web-based educational programme and potential ways in which the initiative could be broadened, in terms of subject content and geographical outreach. The side event was followed up with bi-lateral discussions with some of the workshop participants on how they could contribute. The working sessions planned for the IC will gather a number of additional partners, including governments, to expand content and dissemination of the AgLe@rn Initiative. b) Impact monitoring and evaluation research programme The need to monitor and evaluate impact was also raised at the side event. This initiated further discussion on the most appropriate way of conducting this and let to the proposal of an additional sub-action plan to initiate a research programme / consultation workshop on the most successful / appropriate methodologies for social impact assessment. A research programme to determine the most appropriate methodologies for monitoring and evaluating is being discussed. This would particularly focus on monitoring / evaluating:
A workshop at the IC will gather interested parties to develop such a research programme. c) Strengthening farmers organisations: capacity building towards the farmer level Discussions during both the Advisory Group meeting and in several subsequent bi-laterals – focusing on how the action plan could facilitate the strengthening of bi-lateral information exchange between rural producers and extension services /agricultural professionals (depending on capacity of extant extension services) – to facilitate appropriate application of acquired knowledge.
Subsidies A high visibility, multi-stakeholder campaign against perverse agricultural subsidies:
Organisations expressing an interest in being involved include: Oxfam, International Rural Development Foundation (IRDF), Solagral, WWF, South-South Exchange Network and Unilever. Discussions at the moment address how the campaign should be focussed, in order to ensure its message adequately reflected the interests of developing countries.
Secure access to land – with especial focus on women’s access rights The Popular Coalition to Eradicate Hunger and Poverty has been pursuing a campaign on Access to Land. The Implementation Conference could add value to on-going initiatives in this area, and establish complementarity to the ongoing work, for example:
Discussions are being held with representatives from the Popular Coalition, WEDO, ENDA, several governments and others, including on developing the action plan’s focus on women’s rights.
Ecoagriculture Raising the profile / awareness of the need for sustainable ecosystem management - through increased integration of biodiversity considerations within agricultural management systems:
We are collaborating with IUCN to further the formation of an ‘Ecoagriculture’ coalition, mandated to mobilise both political will and resources to raise the profile of ‘Ecoagriculture’ – strengthening consideration for biodiversity in agricultural management practices. Other interested parties include Future Harvest, UNDP’s Equator Initiative, WWF, IFOAM and a number of other conservation-focused NGOs. They will gather at the IC to agree joint action.
Strengthening partnerships between agricultural community and other stakeholders
CGIAR are championing this action plan. It will need further refining of its focus and close collaboration with IFAP, which is also being established in the water issue strand of the IC.
We are discussing with TradeCraft, Oxfam, ActionAid, IIED, International Organic Agricultural Movement (IFOAM) and others the potential for using the IC as a means of replicating fair / ethical trade initiatives in new sectors, strengthening linkages between Organic and Fair Trade movements, options for impacting business initiatives on sustainable agriculture and fair trade, and other possible focus areas.
Role of the Media SPORE (a magazine for farmers in developing countries), ProNature (a Mexican based NGOs working on communication strategies) and others are working on an action plan aiming to increase the use of the media, eg community radio, to improve access to information for small scale farmers in developing countries. |
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