Madame,
Honourable Chair,

Foremost may I express our sincere thanks owed to the outgoing President, Mr Fawzi Hamad Al-Sultan. He has shown great commitment during his term of office. Mr Al-Sultan, you were enabling IFAD to progress further over the last few years. In your time, IFAD has attained a degree of expertise that has won its extraordinary international recognition. This degree of expertise, and your great personal involvement, were brought most impressively to the fore just a few days ago with the publication of the "Rural Poverty Report 2001".

The excellent report RPR 2001 has prompted some intense debate. This should encourage the international community to

• do a great deal more to reach the development targets, and
• make equal efforts to tackle urban and rural poverty.

The focus on poverty and how to tackle it has been somewhat biased at times. In the 1970s and 1980s, efforts were focused primarily on rural poverty. Impressive results were achieved. In some Asian countries, extreme rural poverty – formerly the fate of the masses – was eradicated during this period. Yet these achievements were not enough. Because the development of rural areas and medium-sized towns did too little to halt the growth of the megacities. Soon, half of the world’s population will be living in large cities. It is to be feared that more and more people will be living in slums.

Poor governance – in some cases even resulting in civil war – as well as unfavourable trade relations and financial instability resulted in setbacks that drove millions into the cities.

Therefore, renewed efforts on poverty must focus on quantity and quality. Many initiatives were, and are still, not sufficiently fostering participation. There is also the need for more coherence in the overall political agendas of both - the donor and recipient countries. When I say no sufficient participation, I mean that the poor have all too often been treated in a paternalistic fashion. Instead, their creative forces and their will for self-help should be strengthened.

Our strategy for combating poverty, and extreme poverty in particular, must stand on two legs. There must be a rural and urban approach, which move forward in step.

The world community has set itself the goal of halving poverty by 2015. The Government of the Federal Republic of Germany is shouldering its share of the responsibility for meeting that goal. As Chancellor Schroder announced at the UN Millennium Assembly in September 2000, we will be unveiling an Action Plan within the next few months. This plan will incorporate all areas of German policy.

Whether we together succeeded in achieving this goal of halving poverty by 2015 depends in equal measure on the:

• reources available,
• the strategies used,
• and the coherence of overall policy agendas in the industrialised and oil-producing countries and also in our partner countries.

Our strategies must take into account that, in a large part of the world, arable land and pasture land is already extremely scarce. There are also limits on the expansion of irrigation. Yet at the same time, information technology is opening up new opportunities to the rural population. These include (for example) irrigation, which in many areas cannot be expanded but can be optimised. They also include making efficient use of the means of production and gaining rapid access to market information.

After all, we need them, the rural population. These days, no society can afford to leave talent and creative potential untapped. Education and creativity are today the most vital resources for development. Yet creativity can only develop and be put to productive use if it is encouraged by the social and political environment. And, most importantly, it must be granted the necessary freedom.

IFAD is working towards the (1996) World Food Summit’s target of halving the number of people in hunger by 2015. Yet it is able to draw only on the quite modest funding provided by the 5^th Replenishment. The founding principle of IFAD – that the burden be shared fairly between industrialised and oil-producing countries – has been seriously eroded.

We must therefore – jointly and without regard for taboos – consider how to put IFAD to optimum use. We must consider how to use its extraordinary level of expertise and how to use its scarce resources.

IFAD should form alliances to join forces with other multilateral and regional institutions, with bilateral donors and with the recipient countries. IFAD’s vast experience makes it well-placed to provide advice on policies and programmes. In the less poor recipient countries, IFAD should increasingly act as a catalyst. It should provide competent support for programmes in which these countries invest substantial funds of their own. IFAD projects should not be isolated "islands of hoe". And before any of the IFAD’s scarce resources are deployed, a realistic impact assessment must be undertaken. This will ensure that the few resources available are concentrated on developing countries that can offer an enabling environment.

We hope, therefore, that the Action Plan can be implemented rapidly and according to the consensus achieved. This should, we hope, enable IFAD to become an even more effective force for poverty reduction. Perhaps it will also enable IFAD to encourage those stakeholders who were not particularly forthcoming at the 5^th Replenishment to display greater commitment at the next replenishment.

IFAD deserves our joint efforts. The President to be elected enters office at a time in which innovative answers must be found to the difficult questions surrounding the future of IFAD. Germany will do everything it can to be supportive.