GDPRD 2023 Annual General Assembly Highlights

Key messaging and speaker quotes are captured in this short report of the Annual General Assembly (AGA) convened on 26 and 27 October 2023. The AGA was a chance to celebrate the Platform’s 20th anniversary and reflect on how the donor landscape in agriculture, rural development and food systems has evolved.

Download the report

Reviewing two decades of development trends demonstrated the enormous shift in development objectives since the Platform was established in the wake of the 2002 European Forum on Rural Development Cooperation.

The Millennium Development Goals set out in the year 2000 were replaced in 2015 by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which set a much wider, interconnected agenda. The 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit and 2023 Stocktaking Moment, together with the 2023 mid-term review of SDG progress, have illuminated the scale of the challenges the development community confronts and the inadequate progress.

Growing hunger, and rising resources devoted to emergency relief, have highlighted the gross shortfall in donor resources to achieve long-term development. The overriding conclusion is that donors need to explore and adopt innovative approaches to rural development, refocusing, and seizing new opportunities, technologies and techniques to scale up the impact of their dollars.

Quotes from the 2023 AGA

This meeting review looks at six key themes for donors:

Why and how the aid agenda has evolved
How shifting to a food systems approach can invigorate rural development
Four sets of related issues will define the new aid agenda:
– Food security and nutrition
– Environment, climate change and biodiversity – Aid effectiveness, coordination and alignment – Conflict, resilience, risk and fragility
Better land governance tools will be central to effective climate action
Donor funding must become more innovative and catalytic
Mechanical and technical jobs offer hope for burgeoning rural youth populations.