Thank you Madame Chair,
The Scientific and Technological Major Group would like to emphasize two
important considerations. These are: the cross cutting issue of Capacity Building
and the importance of enhancing investments in research to address the
challenges of this cycle?s thematic issues.
The cross cutting issue of Capacity Building can be the thread that weaves
together the economic, social, and physical infrastructures. The definition of
Capacity Building that WFEO is using clearly sets the foundation for policy
discussions and the output from this round.
?The building of human, institutional and infrastructure capacity to help societies
develop secure, stable and sustainable economies, governments and other
institutions through mentoring, training, education, physical projects, the infusion
of financial and other resources, and most importantly, the motivation and
inspiration of people to improve their lives.?
When the issues of this theme are considered with a focus on capacity building
needs, major attention is required on: rural to urban migration, education levels
amongst farmers, disproportionate resource allocation to urban issues at the
expense of rural issues, lack of metrics on infrastructure and infrastructure
operations, better informed government workers would make better informed
choices for farmers, and lastly the opportunity to involve women in capacity
building.
Turning to the second cross cutting issue of research and knowledge sharing,
much of the needed knowledge already exists within the scientific and
engineering communities; however the knowledge often does not reach those
that could benefit the mostly because of policy failures. Madame Chair, the
Scientific and Technological Community has partnered with the farming,
business and industry communities to push for a Farming First agenda which
puts the farmer at the centre of the policy processes and calls for the promotion
of interactions between the development processes, research, knowledge use
and policy development. The Scientific and Technological Communities are
calling for increased and consistent investment in farmer centered Research,
Development and engineering applications.
For available knowledge to reach the remote indigenous communities, and
benefit global agriculture, we need genuine partnerships, strengthened human
and institutional arrangements for coordinated research, extension and policy
development. We need to establish open and transparent two-way exchanges
that capture the ?voice of the farmer? creating space for Africa?s women farmers
to actively participate policy formulation and implementation.
There is need to strengthen farm level data collection and national policy analysis
capacity, enhance involvement of universities and research institutions in multistakeholder
public policy debates and the use research evidence to inform
policies. There is need for technologies that enable farmers to receive
information on weather, input and output markets and other early warning data
that allows timely decision making.
Madame Chair, the CSD should make a case for a global policy environment that
recognizes and rewards Agriculture, Forestry systems and sustainable land use
systems to be part of the solutions to climate change mitigation and adaptation
being negotiated. This can happen only if the science community is adequately
resourced to generate the scientific evidence and the technological community
has a conducive policy environment to develop low cost technologies.
Madame Chair, increased investments and partnerships between the, farmers
other major groups and governments are critical for the development and
implementation of sustainable solutions. The S&T communities are grateful for
the visionary leadership of the CSD that embraces contributions of major groups;
we would like to see similar efforts at national level, particularly in Africa.
