“THE UNCCD: A New Opportunity for an enhanced framework of cooperation in Official Development Assistance (ODA) funding for the promotion of sustainable development in arid ecosystems”

Environment Forum : Conference of the party 6 . High level inter-agency panel

Havana, Cuba, 2nd September 2003

by Jack Wilkinson, IFAP President

Mr. Chairman,
Honourable Ministers,
Executive Secretary of the UNCCD
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a pleasure for me to present views from the farmers to this sixth session of the Conference of the Parties. This is the first time that a President of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers has addressed a UNCCD event, and so for us this session marks an important opening up of the Convention to input by farmers.

Our Federation represents family farmers at the global level. It is our members who are the first victims of desertification. Desertification threatens the livelihoods of about 1.2 billion people, and most of these are farmers. We therefore appreciate very much the greater attention being given by UNCCD to the views of the producers and rural people.

Desertification is not only about stopping the spread of deserts. It is much more that a soil fertility issue. For farmers, desertification is fundamentally a development issue. Farmers in arid ecosystems face problems of a harsh environment that are compounded by economic and social problems.

Over the last year or so, the international development agenda has come to be firmly focused on eliminating poverty and hunger.

We know that poverty and hunger are concentrated in the rural areas. We also know that poverty and hunger have been aggravated by the widespread neglect of agriculture over the last ten years. Three out of four of this planet’s poor people live in rural areas, drawing their activities essentially from agriculture. IFAP has been claiming for years that the key to eradicating hunger and poverty is to give higher priority to agriculture in global development efforts.

As a result of the World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg last year, and the World Food Summit five years later held in Rome, it seems that agriculture has at last been restored to its rightful place high up the list of development priorities. We are looking forward to COP 6 also contributing to this progress. As President of IFAP, I would like this Conference to no only recognise the link between desertification and poverty, but to also recognise desertification as a complex development issue that includes agriculture as a priority.

Over 100 countries have ratified the UNCCD text. It is now time to get down to action and identify the needs of the affected communities. UNCCD needs to listen to these communities because they know better than anyone else their own environment. Farmers and rural communities have an important contribution to make to the fight against desertification, and they should be involved right from the start, before building any framework for cooperation. However, the UNCCD has to clearly set the rules and procedures of this participation.

The involvement of farmers’ organisations and other civil society organisations in the CCD should be based on stimulating and supporting self-help development efforts.

As part of our contribution to facilitating farmers’ efforts, IFAP is elaborating a booklet made up of case studies that present practices that farmers have developed to combat desertification. This survey should include data from more than 40 member organisations in countries affected by desertification. By making known the methods used and the strategies adopted by the farmers in response to desertification, it is hoped that his booklet will help to broaden knowledge on concrete actions in the fight against desertification.

Preliminary results of the study show a wide scope of field actions adapted to specific local conditions. However, there is a general lack of a national strategies targeted to fight against desertification. The most efficient actions remain at the local level.

In the struggle to combat desertification, farmers need the support of their colleagues in the scientific community. Partnerships should be established between the scientific communities and the farming communities in order to build on local knowledge, and to add value to local resources. IFAP is indeed working on building synergies between these two complementary communities, and our booklet of case studies, which documents some of these traditional techniques, could be of good use to the scientific community.

Farmers also need to be supported in their efforts by their national governments. And together, farmers and their national governments in developing countries need to be supported by the international community.

Despite the important role of agriculture in the fight against desertification, only 12 per cent of total ODA goes to agriculture, and only 9 per cent of total World Bank loans go agriculture. This has to change.

Donors, governments and development agencies cannot do development for the poor. However, they have a critical role to assist and enable farmers in their own efforts to overcome poverty. Lack of recognition of the key role of farmers in self-help development efforts was a major cause of the failure of previous agricultural development strategies. The UNCCD is no doubt aware of this, and the Convention does provide a more appropriate development framework.

Mr. Chairman, if you were not convinced before, I hope that you now agree that farmers and rural communities need to play a central role in the fight against desertification if the Convention is to be successful.

I now want to mention three of the main problems that farmers face in trying to work their way out of the poverty trap, and which UNCCD might address in some way.

The first is lack of secure access to resources on a long-term basis. Many farmers, especially women farmers, do not have secure land tenure arrangements, secure water rights, access to credit at affordable prices, or access to genetic resources such as improved seeds and livestock. Having security of tenure on their land is the best possible incentive for individual farmers to preserve and improve soil fertility.

The second problem is lack of efficient infrastructure, particularly for the control and management of water supplies, for marketing, transportation and for communications. These are essential parts of a sustainable agricultural system. Farmers need market opportunities, as well as support services, so that they are able to go beyond producing food for their families and produce a surplus for sale on the market in accordance with recognised quality standards.

The third problem I would like to highlight is lack of organisation of farmers. If hunger and poverty are to be reduced, then the market power of the farmers needs to be strengthened relative to the other food chain partners, so that they receive fair prices for their products and a decent income for their work. Farmer-controlled cooperatives can be an important vehicle for strengthening the situation of the farmer in the market. Farmers also need strong advocacy organisations - organisations that are capable of articulating farmers’ views, and making analyses and policy proposals. Governments need well-organised partners to work with in the development process. Finally, farmers’ organisations need to be able to prove effective services to their members, particularly extension services. This is particularly important in the light of the withdrawal of many governments from providing such services to farmers.

There is a lot of work to be done, and financial resources are critical to making adequate progress. IFAP was therefore very pleased that the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) led to the opening of a new window to finance projects to combat land degradation through the Global Environment Fund (GEF). We understand that the GEF has allocated $500 million for projects to promote sustainable land management practises for the period 2003-2006, and that this amount could be doubled through leverage of support from external resources. This is welcome news to the farming community.

The Convention to Combat Desertification has an interesting, broad-based ‘Global Mechanism’ for the mobilisation and channelling of funding to affected countries. We hear that the Global Mechanism is seeking to diversify funding sources and to seek other sources of regional and sectoral cooperation, in collaboration with international agricultural development agencies.

IFAP pays tribute to this diversification of funding sources, which could be achieved by means of decentralised cooperation. IFAP would like to explore ways in which such decentralised cooperation could be undertaken in partnership with its network of farmer organisation members from throughout the world. We see a potential for creating partnership initiatives between farmers’ organisations and development agencies or donors through the Global Mechanism, including for capacity-building. The GM could also help farmers to take advantage of existing investments devoted to combat desertification at the field level.

In closing, Mr. Chairman, I would like to again express my appreciation as the President of IFAP for the opportunity to address this Conference. I hope that this involvement of farmers can be continued and placed on a more permanent footing. Farmers are in the front line in the fight against desertification, we would like to have a voice within the UNCCD structures. IFAP therefore recommends to the present Conference of the Parties to consider setting up an explicit collaborative procedure with farmers as a group on a permanent basis. This would motivate farmers to become more involved in, and committed to, the Convention, and I am convinced that it would help governments to deliver more effectively on the expected outcomes.

Thank you for your attention.