BACKGROUND

This is a global consultative process to determine the need for and possible scope of a proposed international assessment of the role of agricultural science and technology in reducing hunger, improving rural livelihoods and stimulating economic growth over the coming decades.

Management of the process within the World Bank has been given to Robert Watson, World Bank Chief Scientist, credited with the achievements, among others, of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The co-chairs are Bob Watson (World Bank), Louise Fresco (ADG, Agriculture, FAO), Rita Sharma (Govt. of India), Claudia Martinez Zuleta (Govt. of Colombia) and Sefu Ketema (ASARECA, Ethiopia).

The reasons for this process are that "the global community confronts an enormous challenge: stimulating economic growth in rural areas where 75% of the very poor currently reside, and ensuring the nutritional security of a world population that is growing in size and evolving in consumption patterns, without intensifying environmental degradation, social inequity or adverse consequences for human health."

It is an 8 month consultation process about the need and design of such an assessment, which would be followed by the assessment itself from the end of 2003 up to the beginning 2006. The consultation would be conducted in a series of regional meetings, electronic fora and video-conferences, steered by a committee of 40, which should represent all interested parties and guarantee the openness and inclusivity of the process as well as make final recommendations regarding the scope and organisation of the assessment itself.

The initial Consultative Process over the next 8 months is being overseen by a Steering Committee of about 40+ people including, at least, the Co-chairs (5), Governments (12), Private sector entities (4), Foundations (2 observers), Non-governmental organisations (4), Consumer and farmer organisations (2+4), at-large scientists (2), Scientific institutions (4), International agencies (4), UN conventions (2). It was noted that the composition should also reflect an appropriate balance between genders and regions and within the different groups (notably the entire food chain within the private sector), some of which may want to form additional, broader reference groups.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON THE WORLD BANKS INITIATIVE FOR AN

International Assessment on the Role of Agricultural Science and Technology in Reducing Hunger and Improving Rural Livelihoods

Questions from CSOs regarding the Consultative Process and

answers from Bob Watson and Beverly McIntyre, World Bank, 13. March 2003

1. Has the consultative process started and what are the rules of the game? If so, who decides about the format, questions and composition of the meetings and about their documentation?

Yes, the first regional meeting of the consultative process was held in Cairo, Feb 25-26. Prior to this we had an informal half day meeting in Nairobi organized by ASARECA. The format of each of the meetings is similar, i.e., a small number of representatives from all relevant stakeholder groups are invited to discuss three questions: is an international Ag S&T assessment needed, i.e., would it have value; what should the scope of the assessment be; and what management/governance structure would be viewed as open, transparent, legitimate and credible. The list of participants is drawn up by the local organizers in consultation with the World Bank and in consultation with members of the steering committee - the final list is approved by Bob Watson. We would appreciate it if steering committee members could suggest participants for each of these meetings by sending an e-mail to Beverly. Prior to each meeting a set of documents is sent to each participant including the agenda, the issues paper and the minutes from the Dublin meeting, along with a short statement regarding the objectives of the meeting. The issues paper and Dublin minutes have been translated into Spanish. The meetings will be held in the local language when deemed appropriate by the local organizers, e.g., in Cairo was held in English and Russian, the meeting in Lima will be held in English and Spanish. As in Dublin, notetakers and rapporteurs will take copious notes, which will then be synthesized and posted on the web site, as well as e-mailed to members of the steering committee. The notes from the ASARECA meeting have been posted, and we are now finalizing those from Cairo.

2. What are the questions posed in these consultations and what are the basic information to the participants?

See the answer to question 1 - basically, the key questions posed for each consultation are what are the core S&T questions and what are the contextual issues; will the proposed assessment be valuable, i.e., how can different stakeholders use it; and what would comprise a transparent, credible governance and organizational structure. In each regional consultation we are asking what are the specific concerns of your region that could be addressed in an assessment. All participants receive the Issues paper, the Dublin notes and notes from other meetings that have occurred prior to that particular consultation.

3. Which consultation meetings are being planned and conducted by whom where and when? There are quite a few meetings announced on the web site but no further details given.

The local organizers are the groups listed under the column "host" that you received a few days ago. We are still finalizing the details on a few consultations. The local organizers provide the on-ground logistics and act as protocol advisors. The meetings are chaired by one or more of the co-chairs, e.g., Bob Watson chaired the meeting in Cairo, Claudia Martinez Zuleta will chair the meeting in Lima. Break-out sessions are chaired by the co-chairs and regional participants (the rapporteurs and note takers are from the region).

4. Has the Steering Committee been set up? Who is on the steering committee and what are it's remits, rules of procedure and agenda? What are the issues the Steering Committee should jointly agree on?

You received the current membership list a few days ago -- we will send an updated list as soon as we hear from the remaining groups/governments. Formal invitation letters will be sent from Ian Johnson and Bob Watson later this week. The remits are the Terms of Reference agreed to in Dublin and sent out to you all when you were invited to join - for your convenience they are attached to this. The work of the committee will be to read the reports from each of the regional consultations and at the conclusion of the process to present recommendations to Jim Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank, as to the advisability of an assessment, the scope and key questions of an assessment and a governance and organizational structure. The recommendations of the steering committee will also be posted on the web-site.

5. What financial support is provided by the World Bank and other institutions to the consultative process and how will they be used? Who decides about their use?

The World Bank, the governments of Ireland, UK, Germany, France, and India, along with the Rockefeller Foundation and the CGIAR have provide financial support. The CTA has graciously agreed to host and support a meeting, and the government of Finland may also be able to provide support, but that is not yet confirmed. The attached list of meetings shows who is supporting each of the regional meetings. In each case the donors are providing the funding without any strings attached. The use of the funds are approved by the World Bank and are used to provide travel support for developing country participants to attend the meetings - coach class plane tickets, hotel and meals.

Specifically, the Bank supported the meeting in Dublin with the help of the Government of Ireland and will also help with the meetings in Addis Ababa, San Jose, New Delhi, and the two meetings of the steering committee. Bank support is limited to provision of economy class travel and lodging for developing country participants. It remains to be determined if we will be able to partially support a meeting in the Indonesia/Malaysia/Philippines region. The Bank has also provided funds for the translation of documents into Spanish (these are posted on web site).

Steering committee for Consultative process

Terms of Reference

Steering committee shall be constituted as follows with all due consideration for the inclusion of individuals with extensive, appropriate scientific, technical and policy expertise; effective north-south and gender balance; as well as individuals representing key stakeholder groups:

• Co-chairs (5)

• Governments (15)

• Private sector entities (5)

• Foundations (2)

• Non-governmental organizations (5)

• Consumer groups (2)

• Producer organizations (5)

• At-large scientists (3)

• Scientific institutions (5)

• UN agencies and conventions (7)

• Finalize the design of the consultative process based on discussion held in Dublin, including:

• Participants and agenda for each consultation; (single vs. multi-stakeholder; seniority and number of participants)
• Location of regional meetings;
• Location of videoconferences;
• Website content.

• Participation in the consultation process: a representative set of members shall be involved in each regional consultation, which will be chaired by the co-chair from the region
• Oversight of the consultation process. The secretariat (Bank staff) will be responsible for providing feedback on the website, videoconferences, and regional meetings to the steering committee. The steering committee will be responsible for using feedback to assess sufficiency of design and to make changes as necessary.
• Individual members shall elicit feedback on the proposed assessment process from their own stakeholder group.
• Further refinement of steering committee functions, if needed.
• Responsible for final recommendation on advisability of international assessment.
• If recommendation to proceed, then steering committee will determine:

• Governance (i.e., intergovernmental or non-governmental);
• Management, including the location of the secretariat;
• Principles and procedures (nomination/selection process for authors and reviewers, the design and management of the peer-review process, the "broad" structure of the report and the final approval process);
• The scope of the assessment, including key questions;
• Timeframe of assessment;
• A funding strategy.

Schedule of Regional Meetings Associated with Consultative Process

Generic Template for Consultation meetings

Consultation on Proposed Assessment on the Role of Agricultural Science and Technology in Reducing Hunger, Improving Rural Livelihoods and Stimulating Environmentally Sustainable Economic Growth in the Coming Decades

(date) 2003

(location)

Day 1

0830 Welcome

0845 Opening Remarks

0900 Plenary presentation and discussion on the scope of the proposed assessment

1000 Breakout groups on scope and key questions

There is broad acknowledgement that improvements in agriculture can increase food security and alleviate poverty. In this meeting we want to focus on the key questions in agricultural science and technology that decision makers need answered in order to formulate policies that result in fewer hungry, poor people.

Some ground rules for use in formulating questions:

• Use a broad definition of agriculture (one that includes livestock, aquaculture and forestry, commodities and biomass)
• Focus on scientific and technical issues related to agriculture, i.e., increased production, product diversification, and human nutrition; and related environmental, social and institutional considerations
• Encompass the full range of existing and possible future technologies; and
• Keep in mind that these questions will be used to produce a high-quality assessment that analyzes existing knowledge to identify gaps where we need more information and more research in order to capture the full range of perspectives along the entire agricultural chain.

1300 Lunch

1430-1800 Breakout groups on scope and key questions

Day 2

0830 Breakout groups continued

1030-1045 Tea

1100 Plenary: Report from breakout groups

1300 Lunch

1400 Plenary presentation and discussion on organization and governance of proposed assessment

1500 Breakout groups on organization and governance

1700 Plenary presentation of breakout groups and closing remarks

Consultative Process

Goal, methodology, suggested locales and projected costs

Goal

To engage a balanced and representative set of stakeholders in each region (Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Pacific, Europe and North America) in the consultative process on the proposed assessment of the role of agricultural science and technology in reducing hunger, improving rural livelihoods and stimulating economic growth over the coming decades.

The goals of each regional meeting are to:

• Learn the needs of each region in terms of core S&T issues
• Draft a list of key questions for the proposed assessment, i.e., define the scope of the assessment, ensuring regional priorities are taken into account
• Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different organizational structures and governing principles and procedures for an assessment

Methodology

It was agreed in Dublin that the consultative process must be transparent and inclusive with balanced participation with particular attention paid to geographical and gender balance. Specialists and generalists, natural scientists and policy experts, experts in traditional and modern knowledge, producers, environmentalists and health experts from all relevant stakeholder groups active in the area of agriculture (governments, private sector, producers, consumers, non-governmental organizations, international organizations, extension systems, foundations, scientific organizations and individual scientists) should be included. It was noted that high-level participation, especially of governments, is essential for buy-in to the process.

We will do this via regional meetings (see table below), which will, where possible, leverage meetings planned by other entities and utilize the CGIAR centers where possible. A deliberative process, which will feed into the regional meetings (see Annex I for more details), will engage producer groups in developing countries. These reference groups are aimed at including the voices of those who are usually marginalized, e.g., landless farmers, fishers and pastoralists. The end goal is to reflect the concerns of all stakeholders about issues related to agricultural science and technology in the questions that frame the assessment.

In working with the reference groups, we propose adopting the principles used in preparations for the World Summit on Sustainable Development:

• respect for the autonomy of civil society organizations and their right to self-organize; and
• the promotion of a decentralized, inclusive process of information and consultation that privileges those sectors of the population that are furthest from the decision-making arena.

We propose that the agenda for the meeting, the concept paper and other short papers (e.g., the synthesis report from the Dublin meeting; a summary of key questions from the Dublin participants; governance/organizational/peer-review options for the assessment) be circulated prior to the regional meetings. The two-day agenda would be similar to that of Dublin, i.e., a mixture of plenary meetings and breakout groups. The opening morning session would be used to give background on the development of the consultative process, the meeting in Dublin, describe the ground rules and provide time for questions. As in Dublin, a significant part of the meeting would be in smaller breakout groups to stimulate discussion. The co-chair from the region and a representative from the convening body(s) will chair the meetings.

A short report from the Consultative Meeting in Cairo by Maryam Rahmanian, CENESTA

My name is Maryam Rahmanian and I was present at the recent World Bank regional consultation in Cairo, representing CENESTA (Iranian NGO) and also the IUCN Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy, which CENESTA currently hosts.

There were very few NGOs from our region present at the meeting but I think we were able to put our concerns on the table very well. There were 5 of us there (thanks to Patrick's initiative). There were no NGOs from Central Asia and the Caucasus.

Our main concerns were the integrity of the process of the consultation and the assessment. We have not yet come to any conclusion about whether to participate in the assessment or not. These are some points of concern:

1.      The World Bank may promise to not focus on biotechnology, but in our region, our governments are so enamoured by biotechnology that they put it firmly on the agenda of the proposed assessment. So although the assessment is about agricultural technology in general, yet without a doubt biotechnology will be the main-- and the most controversial-- issue on the agenda and therefore we have come to think of it as the standard by which to measure the value and potential of this assessment.

2.      Everyone present at the consultation said they were fully supportive of the proposed assessment with the notable exception of civil society. We maintained that the value of any assessment would be conditional upon the integrity of the process of assessment.

3.      Bob Watson told us that his main concern was not about the legitimacy of the assessment itself, but of the legitimacy of this period of consultation. We agree with him that the consultations have been very rushed and have not allowed us, at least in our region, to solicit the views of important players in our region. In my opinion, since the assessment will be built on the foundation that is laid by these consultations, the only way to ensure the legitimacy of the assessment itself is to make sure that there is flexibility to re-define the scope and process of the assessment later. If we lay down a very rigid framework based on a series of rushed and non-participatory regional consultations then we jeapordise the value of the assessment itself.

4.      We proposed to Bob to have a parallel civil society assessment, which would be bottom-up and would link with the parallel government/inter-governmental assessment at key levels. He was very much against the idea of having "two assessments" but said that there could be a bottom-up component for the assessment, as long as there was also a top-down component. He invited us to present a proposal, including a budget, for the civil society process that we envision. I think this is something we need to coordinate among all regions.

5.      Bob repeatedly stressed the importance of civil society participation in such global initiatives and kept drawing parallels between this and the other initiatives he has been involved with, such as the panel on climate change. He basically argued that what worked for carbon emmissions could also work for biotechnology. Our main concern here is that the carbon and biotechnology industries operate in different contexts. Personally, I am not very familiar with either but I think that there must be differences of history, politics, economics and so on between these industries. I think we need to enlist the help of people/groups who know the politics of biotechnology very well in designing an process that would not lead to a foregone conclusion (pro biotech).

At IUCN we are dealing with a controversy over our engagement in an assessment of the mining industry. The similarities between that assessment and this are uncanny: 2-3 years, $10 million, multi-stakeholder, efforts to be transparent through a huge website, "particpatory processes"….

Our Commission was most concerned that the assessment effectively assumed that there was a level playing field among all stakeholders (mining companies, local and indigenous communities, etc. - see http://www.iucn.org/themes/ceesp/mining.htm for more information). We came to the conclusion that where there is not a level playing field, every effort must be made to empower the least empowered groups. There is no level playing field in mining, and neither is there one in biotechnology.

LATEST FOR BUDAPEST MEETING

International Assessment of Science and Technology for Agriculture

CSO issues for Budapest

At the Dublin meeting last October CSOs raised a number of key issues about the nature and content of the assessment. Apart from the general concern that this assessment could become a mechanism for promoting genetic engineering if it does not remain open and transparent, the main issues raised in the Dublin meeting focused on 'Inclusivity' and 'Sustainable Development Impacts':

• CSOs were concerned that all knowledge systems and science views be included, especially those of the poor themselves, be they farmers, pastoralists, fisherfolk, forest dwellers or poor consumers. That these people be deliberately include in the consultations and the assessment and that their demands and short and long-term needs be at the heart of the assessment - not the interests of global science and technology providers.
• CSOs were also concerned that the assessment be based on a critical retrospective assessment of the contribution of science and technology to the present state of food, agriculture and agroecosystems. This will inform priority setting for the assessment of how 'science and technology' could make a positive contribution to the livelihoods of the very poor in particular and all food producers in general, and maximise, maintain or restore agroecosystem functions to support their production systems and for the production of public environmental goods.

Since then, the greatest criticism is that the whole concept is still top down, the methodology proposed does not lend itself to inclusivity and there are significant power asymmetries. The question list in Appendix A will need substantial revision to reflect the perspectives of the poor. We need to ensure that a greater degree of deliberative democracy be included in the structure and implementation of the assessment.

A second concern is how to ensure the involvement of the UN at a sufficiently high level in the governance of the assessment. We would be concerned if the World Bank had a prominent role in governance and if there is decisive domination by governments that could exclude the views of the poor.

A significant section of Civil Society would reject the assessment if these issues are not addressed.

Bottom Line- Basic Principles for the Assessment

• Participation of CSOs and Social Movements: The Assessment must have a sufficient pro-poor orientation and include organisations of the poor.
• Selection criteria for membership of the governance structures should be clear and transparent and should make clear how decisions about which governments and CSOs etc. will participate in the 'governing body' and in the Geographical Regional Bureaux. We should argue for a bias towards developing countries and organisations of the poor.
• Traditional knowledge and the so called "peasant rational" of small-scale producers (as specified above) concerning rural production in the South should be respected and taken as perhaps more valid compared with the views of the formal sector institutions.
• The social and environmental impacts, implications and risks of hi-tech agricultural systems and the impacts of 'technology transfer' should be assessed properly in the review with an emphasis on Precaution and support for sustainable livelihoods. The retrospective review should carefully analyse the impacts of industrial agriculture, forestry and fisheries on the environment and livelihoods of the poor.
• Identification of good 'agricultural' practices and sustainable natural resources management by small-scale producers (including farming, pastoralism and artisanal fishing) should be a basis for defining priorities for farmer-led research and extension work, supported by formal sector institutions. These should emphasise the natural resources, plants, livestock and aquatic organisms of the poor, not agro-industry.
• Topics such as trade policies, perverse subsidies and agricultural support, should be addressed by the review as part of the "enabling conditions".
• The Assesment's sponsoring organisation and its secretariat should be based in an international agency with a high level of credibility. Our preference is for High Level UN status.

Way Forward

Assuming the basic principles can be agreed and CSOs are willing to propose collaboration to colleagues and networks, Civil Society Organisations could have prominent role in the implementation of the Assessment, subject to the availability of sufficient funds.

Apart from offering experience and expertise in preparing materials and writing chapters of the assessment, the main contribution of CSOs could be in facilitating the inclusion of views of the majority. Collectively, CSOs have access to a huge array of tried and tested methods backed by substantial social science research. CSOs could offer this service if there is sufficient time to do this. The timetable will need to be extended.

Patrick Mulvany, ITDG

29 July 2003