Chairperson,
Mr President,
Distinguished Delegates,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is an honour for me to be with you this afternoon and I wish to convey the FAO Director-General’s greetings to the IFAD Governing Council.

This year IFAD marks 30 years of fighting rural poverty and hunger and it is a pleasure for FAO to be here to honour this anniversary. I would like to congratulate IFAD on its impressive achievements throughout these years and the work undertaken for the benefit of poor people. IFAD’s operations have enabled more than 300 million small farmers, artisans and indigenous peoples to take steps to achieve a better life for themselves and for their families. 

IFAD, WFP and FAO share the strong commitment to achieving the first Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of hungry and poor people by 2015. In spite of all the collective efforts made and the resources invested, including by IFAD, hunger and poverty remain widespread in many countries. FAO’s 2007 Report on the State of Food and Agriculture highlights that there are still over 850 million undernourished people, of which 820 million are in developing countries.

Mr Chairperson, new factors are aggravating the state of food insecurity in the world: unprecedented price hikes for basic foods, the repercussions of climate change in terms of increased droughts and floods, as well as growing demand for bioenergy. These are new challenges for our organizations. We have to be ready to adopt appropriate strategies to intervene and prevent shocks, as well as to restore rural livelihoods in countries where the most vulnerable are particularly hit by the consequences of often unpredictable events.

Given the growing recognition among governments and donors of the prominent role that agriculture should have in the development agenda, IFAD and FAO can jointly provide long-term support and commitment by further improving their efficiency and cross-agency coordination.

Mr Chairperson, let me now talk more in depth about the three main challenges: high food prices, climate change and bioenergy.

Agriculture commodity prices rose nearly ten percent in 2006 and in some cases even more  in 2007. The FAO food price index in December 2007 was nearly 40 percent above that a year earlier. The surge in prices has been led primarily by dairy, grains and oils, but prices of other commodities, with the exception of sugar, have also increased significantly. Some examples include export prices of maize, rice and wheat that have been increasing since June 2007 and now remain at high levels. These unprecedented price hikes for basic food are driven by historically low food stocks, droughts and floods linked to climate change, high oil prices and growing demand for bioenergy. They are also the consequence of under-investments in agriculture over too many years.

Climate change is another major challenge that will exacerbate food insecurity in many countries. Dramatic evidence lies in the current floods in Africa, the July and August floods in South Asia and the recent hurricanes in Central America and the Caribbean. Changes in temperature have long-term consequences on the viability and productivity of agricultural systems. Natural resources, fisheries and forests will also be affected by climate change. The most vulnerable sector will be rainfed agriculture, the mainstay of food production in most countries.

Bioenergy is another crucial issue that will impact efforts to combat hunger. The bioenergy sector is in full development in many countries. Growing more crops for biofuels may help reduce greenhouse gas emissions but  they can also help raise agricultural prices and adversely affect the most vulnerable populations. The issue is very complex and requires further studies and analysis. For this reason, FAO has set up a multidisciplinary research group. At the same time, it is crucial to highlight that policies on biofuels need to be coordinated with international efforts to fight hunger. This issue will be discussed at the High-Level Conference on “World Food Security and the Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy”, to be convened by FAO in Rome from 3 to 5 June 2008. The overall purpose of the conference is to address food security and poverty reduction in the face of climate change and energy security.

Mr Chairperson, allow me to briefly illustrate the important and always evolving cooperation between the Rome-based agencies.

I am delighted to report that cooperation between IFAD, FAO and WFP has continuously and significantly increased over the last years and this trend is expected to persist both in Rome and in the field. IFAD and FAO are cooperating in line with the ‘Delivering as One’ pilot initiative of the UN. This initiative builds on the existing reform agenda set by UN Member States, which ask the UN development system to accelerate its efforts to increase coherence and effectiveness of its operations in the field through the establishment of joint offices. Following this path, IFAD and FAO are working together to ensure that the agriculture and rural development agenda are adequately addressed under the United Nations Development Assistance Framework. FAO is currently hosting IFAD staff as part of its field presence programme in the United Republic of Tanzania and sustains IFAD’s implementation support activities in Madagascar, Mozambique, Rwanda and Zambia – yet another example of cooperation. I am pleased to note that good progress has been made to develop a long-term framework agreement between our two organizations for joint field presence.

A comprehensive mapping exercise on various aspects of collaboration between IFAD, WFP  and FAO, covering 2006 and 2007,  has just  been completed and will provide a good basis for examining strategically further joint  policies and activities between the our agencies.

Furthermore, I would like to recall that, since 1977, through the FAO Investment Centre Division, there has been a strong programme of work with IFAD in the formulation and implementation of IFAD-financed operations. Over the last two years this cooperation has almost doubled, with FAO fielding over 50 missions on behalf of, or jointly with IFAD during 2007 alone. The prospect of strengthening cooperation is even greater, as FAO has also begun providing supervision support to IFAD’s operations.

A detailed Independent External Evaluation has been carried out at FAO, similar to the one at IFAD two years ago. One important recommendation is ‘to ensure synergies with IFAD in a broad range of technical interfaces from rural finance to agribusiness and gender, including project development, supervision and national policy dialogue’.  Early actions arising from this review include close cooperation between the two agencies. An immediate manifestation of this is expected in connection with the organization of the High-Level Conference on World Food Security and the Challenges of Bioenergy and Climate Change in June 2008.

Another important initiative arising from the IEE is the formulation of a strategy for FAO for investment. This strategy will strengthen FAO’s support for investment at country level, providing capacity building in support of developing countries to determine their own investment priorities, approaches and plans including within the framework of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers. This work will draw upon discussions with IFAD and is expected to open up opportunities for further collaboration.

Mr Chairperson, Mr President, Distinguished Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen, let me conclude by emphasizing that our role in this changing world remains to help the poorer countries and populations to deal with old and new challenges, and that our organizations must continue to adapt themselves to these changes by developing innovative and more efficient mechanisms for tackling problems and finding appropriate solutions. This is our individual and shared challenge.

I wish you a successful Council.

Thank you.