Tackling rural poverty, together

Paris gathering highlights “the opportunity”

Crowded agenda at Platform's third Annual Meeting

Over 60 senior representatives from donor agencies, government ministries and international charities met in Paris on December 12-13, 2007 for the Platform's third Annual Meeting under the theme “Agriculture is back on the agenda: seizing the opportunity”.

Much of their attention went to the insight and analysis on offer in the 2008 World Development Report, titled “Agriculture for Development”, and to accounts from officials of the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on progress in implementing the 2005 Paris Declaration. The event also heard presentations from prospective partner-organisations and showcased Platform current projects (see following stories).

In addition, participants made progress on two important internal initiatives: a revised draft of the Charter, or Platform statutes, that takes account of the organisation's growing reach and workload, and the Joint principles for aid effectiveness in agriculture and rural development, due for presentation in April 2008 as a voluntary donor's code of conduct.

“It was a important gathering of senior people”, says John Barrett, Head of Livelihoods Division at the UK's Department for International Development (DFID) and a member of the Platform Steering Committee. “The take-away message was that the Platform is going from strength to strength and has an important role to play if we're all going to make more progress in tackling rural poverty.”

Annual Meeting Report

Download presentations from the Annual Meeting: See page 15 of the report.

New board to power Platform's progress

Kohlmeyer (left) and Wales will “harvest the fuel” from work since 2004

Members of the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development voted to create the Platform Board, a new executive decision-making body, at a special meeting on December 14, 2007 in Paris, electing Christoph Kohlmeyer (BMZ) as board chairman and Mike Wales (FAO) as vice-chairman. They had served until the Paris meeting as chairman and vice-chairman of the Steering Committee, respectively.

The new Platform Board comprises all 31 full paying members of the Platform and appoints the Steering Committee, also to be chaired by Mike Wales. Steering Committee members are Mushtaq Ahmed (Canada's CIDA), John Barrett (the UK's DFID), Marc Debois (European Commission DG-DEV), Florence Lasbennes (Foreign Ministry of France) and Nwanze Okidegbe (World Bank).

“We can be proud of our progress”, Chairman Kohlmeyer told the meeting. “Now it's time to harvest our best work and distil the fuel to run this organisation.”

A French call for focus

Donors “can't go solo anymore”

Foreign ministry expert Lasbennes: “Whole organisations” must pay attention

Florence Lasbennes is an agronomist with four years of field work in Mali under her belt and specialist knowledge of land reform. Now back at HQ, she advises the Directorate General for International Co-operation and Development (DGCID), a branch of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Newly-elected as one of six members of the Platform Steering Committee, she took charge of hosting arrangements for the Platform's Annual General Meeting, December 17-18, 2008, in Paris, where she spoke to Timothy Nater.

France is part of the broader donor consensus that agriculture is back on the development agenda. What are the opportunities for the Platform?

After the Monterrey Consensus and the 2005 Paris Declaration, we've clearly reached a new watershed in development policymaking. Donor organisations know they can't go solo any more. It's the main reason we're all together here today. We Focal Points in the Platform's 31 member organisations now need to get our internal information system up and running properly. Too many of our colleagues still don't know what we're up to. It's not enough for us to join and comment as individuals on what the Platform is doing: we have to get our whole organisations to pay attention.

How can France contribute to the Platform's work?

That depends on how the Platform designs its advocacy system. How effective can our collective policymaking be? If Platform documents, like the upcoming 2008 Donor Code of Conduct for rural development, are to be put into practice, what would this imply? Will endorsement of the Code by members be binding? Should it be?

Agriculture is back on the political agenda, but in euro terms, levels of aid to agriculture are still declining.

France, too, has reduced its levels of aid to agriculture in developing countries, although not as heavily as some donor nations. Today, our efforts are strongly oriented towards developing the right agricultural policies and strengthening the agricultural value chain, from production to market. And this is where we believe that farmers' associations will prove effective partners and allies in the collective advocacy undertaken through the Global Donor Platform.

Is advocacy, then, the Platform's key role?

No, there's also an extraordinary concentration of technical expertise in our midst here. What's the best way of sharing it? My feeling is that the Platform's programme of work is still too broad. We need to focus on just a few key measures, for example concrete help for country-level SWAp implementation.