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DEVELOPMENT: To Feed the World, Gov’ts Break New Ground with Civil Society

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Oct 15 2010 (IPS) - For over a decade, seasoned activist Sarojini Rengam’s efforts to storm the bureaucratic barricades at global food security meetings in Rome hardly produced any cracks. The tightly structured agenda at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) gatherings she went to were unequivocal about where activists stood – in the margins.

The likes of Rengam, the executive director of the Asia-Pacific branch of global green lobby Pesticide Action Network, were given limited time to air their concerns towards the end of the annual Committee of World Food Security (CFS) meeting. Moreover, this virtual postscript to the conference came after government policy makers had already drafted a final document.

“Civil society organisations were often seen as environmental terrorists,” said Rengam of how groups like her Penang-based non-governmental organisation (NGO) and others from the global South were viewed by government officials who dominated the annual event hosted by the U.N. body in the Italian capital.

But not any more.

In an unprecedented nod toward civil society organisations, this year’s annual FAO event to shape global food security policy rolled out the welcome mat to some 150 activists who took part in the just-finished meeting – on equal footing with government delegates.

“Our inputs were not ignored, as in the past,” Rengam said during a telephone interview from Rome. “Our views were noted down, such as on land acquisition, which is a major problem in Asia. This was a big jump.”

Other activists like Marlene Ramirez are also basking in the new spirit of inclusion that was on display at the FAO’s headquarters, where this year’s high-level intergovernmental meeting of the CFS ran from Oct. 11-15.

“It was very empowering. We had opportunities to intervene simultaneously since we were there as co-equals with the governments,” said Ramirez, secretary-general of the Asian Partnership for the Development of Human Resources in Rural Areas, a Manila-based regional grassroots network. “It has made a major difference for civil society.”

This week’s debates on finding solutions to food security were influenced by “the voices of many civil society sectors,” she revealed during an interview from the meeting site. “Governments got to hear alternative solutions and the need to explore alternative ways.”

Rengam and Ramirez were among 150 civil society representatives from across the world that took part in this week’s groundbreaking meeting. These groups, of which 30 were from Asia, represented regional and international farmers’ organisations, herders associations and indigenous organisations.

This break from the format of conventional U.N. meetings – where civil society groups are accorded marginal, or at times only symbolic, space – is winning early praise from some government delegates, among them the representatives from the Philippines and Argentina.

“It is very important that finally, member governments have recognised that NGOs and CSOs (civil society organisations) have a role to play institutionally,” said Noel de Luna, current head of the CFS, during an interview. “It serves as an assurance that the voices who we have excluded in the past are heard.”

“CSO are directly in contact with the people going hungry and living in poverty and were able to bring that reality to the discussions,” the delegate from the Philippines added. “In the past, all we heard were only statements by governments.”

The first hint of this push for CSOs to be included in the CFS emerged between 2007 and 2008, as the world was grappling with the confluence of the food and fuel crisis, followed by the global financial crisis.

“There was gradual acknowledgement that food security and food availability issues cannot be solved by governments only,” said Thomas Price, head of FAO’s branch that works with activists. “Governments wanted this body (CFS) to be the lead body on food security issues.”

The outcome, with civil society groups at the policy table for the first time, is “a radical, if not revolutionary change,” he told IPS. “They have been affecting the discourse at the plenary sessions and submitting documents at other proceedings.”

At the same time, he conceded: “Some governments are hesitant and resistant in having CSOs at the table, while others are facilitating civil society participation.”

The FAO’s ready embrace of civil society activists in shaping food security policies echoes in the Asia-Pacific, home to two-thirds of the world’s more than one billion people who went hungry every day in 2009. The region saw the number of people in chronic hunger rise from 609 million in 2008 to 658 million in 2009.

This figure dampens the praise showered on the region known for high economic growth. “Economic growth has benefited the rich and the middle class, but didn’t benefit those living below the poverty line,” Hiroyuki Konuma, the FAO’s regional head, told IPS. “They are the ones who have suffered as the food crisis hit, and then the financial crisis.”

This disparity is widening and gatherings like the CSF help address “not only problems about increasing food production, but the access issue – how farmers could access food to reduce poverty,” he added. “If we are to change the politics, the people in each country must influence the policy direction of new agriculture programmes.”

“Food security issues cannot be solved by U.N. agencies alone, or by individual governments alone,” Konuma added. “We have to build solidarity with different levels of people, including civil society.”