Reviews the measures taken by the Organization to improve its efficiency and effectiveness, decrease costs and ensure the relevance of its work to the needs and expectations of member nations. Covers the initiatives taken and the changes made in key areas of the Organization over the 1994-1999 period.
Public support mechanisms for agriculture in many cases hinder the transformation towards healthier, more sustainable, equitable, and efficient food systems, thus actively steering us away from meeting the Sustainable Development Goals and targets of the Paris Agreement. This report sets out the compelling case for repurposing harmful agricultural producer support to reverse this situation, by optimizing the use of scarce public resources, strengthening economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, and ultimately driving a food systems transformation that can support global sustainable development commitments. The report provides policymakers with an updated estimate of past and current agricultural producer support for 88 countries, projected up until 2030. The trends emerging from the analysis are a clear call for action at country, regional and global levels to phase out the most distortive, environmentally and socially harmful support, such as price incentives and coupled subsidies, and redirecting it towards investments in public goods and services for agriculture, such as research and development and infrastructure, as well as decoupled fiscal subsidies. Overall, the analysis highlights that, while removing and/or reducing harmful agricultural support is necessary, repurposing initiatives that include measures to minimize policy trade-offs will be needed to ensure a beneficial outcome overall. The report confirms that, while a few countries have started repurposing and reforming agricultural support, broader, deeper, and faster reforms are needed for food systems transformation. Thus, it provides guidance (in six steps) on how governments can repurpose agricultural producer support – and the reforms this will take.
Provides a methodological framework for decisions concerning decentralisation of agricultural services through deconcentration of the public administration, delegation to public or private agencies, devolution, partnerships with civil society organisations or privatisation. These forms of decentralisation are presented as options to be considered according to the policy objectives pursued.
The Right to Food Guidelines provide practical guidance on ways to implement the right to adequate food in a wide range of policy and programmes areas through a human rights-based approach. Since the adoption of the Right to Food Guidelines, FAO and its partners have produced a wealth of tools, strengthened capacity, and facilitated multi-stakeholder dialogues worldwide. But the goal of realizing the right to food of everyone is not accomplished yet- over 820 million people are currently suffering from chronic hunger. This fifteen-Year Retrospective on the Right to Food Guidelines helps us look back and understand what has worked and why, where the bottlenecks lie, and how governments and their partners can be most effective in the fight against hunger and malnutrition.
The links between trade-related policy reforms and food security is of key concern to many developing countries. This publication sets out the findings of 15 country case studies from Cameroon, Chile, China, Ghana, Guatemala, Guyana, India, Kenya, Malawi, Morocco, Nigeria, Peru, Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda. The coverage includes countries at different stages of development with the main focus on low-income countries that are likely to be at greater risk of food insecurity. The studies examine the impact of trade-related policy reforms on agricultural prices, production and trade, and the consequences for food security issues for each country.
In recent years, FAO has carried out extensive assessments of the forest tenure situation in the four regions of Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America and Central Asia, including its impact on sustainable forest management and poverty reduction. The experiences and lessons learned from these assessments, complemented by numerous studies carried out by other organizations, provide a rich information base on different tenure systems and on the successes and challenges of tenure reform processes.
The primary focus of this publication is on the agriculture sector and the impact that trade reform can have on its ability to contribute to improved food security in the context of wider structural changes that result from reforms. The publication draws on a wealth of existing and contemporary research, and introduces a range of related debates.
This report forms part of a review aimed at providing advice on improving forest concession systems in tropical forests. The review was carried out by FAO in cooperation with the International Tropical Timber Organization, the Brazilian Forest Service, the Center for International Forestry Research and Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement. The report is based on three regional reports produced by consultants, discussions at an expert meeting in Rome in November 2015, and a literature review
