Webcast
FAO | WASAG
WASAG. The global framework on water scarcity in agriculture.
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Speakers
00:00:01
Boroto
00:00:19
Lifeng Li
00:06:22
Boroto
00:17:19
Ania Grobicki
Transcriptions
Boroto
Welcome again. And I would like to give the floor to our Director, Mr. Lee Fengli, to deliver the opening remarks for this second Consultative Meeting on the WASAG strategy for 2025-2031. Over to you, Mr. Lee Fengli.
Lifeng Li
Thank you, Prado. Excellencies, distinguished guests, WASAG founders and stakeholders, ladies, gentlemen. A very good morning to all of you from Rome. I now welcome all of you to this consultative meeting on the WASAG strategy 2025-2031. Thank you for making the time to participate in this meeting. As we all know, to this consultative meeting on the WASAG strategy 2025-2031. Thank you for making the time to participate in this meeting. As we all know, as we all know, This remains one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century. Agriculture is one of the contributor, considering that over 70% of global threshold withdrawal is for agriculture. In low-income countries, this could rise up to 90% compared to 44% in some high-income countries. The changing rainfall patterns and warming climate, food risk, the food security, and the livelihood of farmers and people worldwide. In this context, the global framework on Water Succesity Agriculture, agroname WASAG, was launched in 2016 at the UNFCC, COP22 in Marrakech, Morocco, to bring together key players across the globe and from different sectors to tackle the collective challenges of using water much better and much more efficient in agriculture to ensure good security for all.Since April 2017, The WASAC Partnership was established to foster collaboration among its partners, including the state actors and the non-state actors, for the development and deployment of policies, strategies, programmes, practises, enhancing field capacity for adaptation of agriculture towards scarcity. Wasac substantially established several working groups on topics such as Jordan Preparedness, Financing Mechanism, Sea-line Agriculture, Sustainable Agriculture, Water Management, Water and Emigration, Water and Nutrition. Many partners participated, financing mechanisms, sea-line agriculture, sustainable agriculture, water management, water and migration, water and nutrition. Many partners participated in these working groups and also contribute to the knowledge of product. Of course, the WASAG strategy was developed for 2021 to 2024 that guided the work of the WASAG in the past few years. This is a quest to better respond to the need of the member countries in finding the required solutions as requested by the Committee of the Co-Op to reach FAO reports on the activities of WASAG. The Rome Declaration on Water Succesing in Agriculture was adopted last October at a high-level Rome Water Dialogue on WASAG, during which a member-led steering committee was established to provide a strategic oversight and guidance and to mobilise the required commitment and resources to WASAG.Wasag strategy for the next six years is being developed to guide the implementation of the Rome Declaration to build resilience to water scarcity agriculture in line with the WASAG's vision, mission, and objectives. Together with the member-led Student Committee, together with this strategy, together with the member-led Student Committee and the WASAG strategy and development, It means that the WASAG strategy and development, it means that the WASAG partnership is entering the new period that will have a much impact in the future with the support of all the members and the countries. The Member Land Stream Committee had its first meeting on March 19, and they requested that a detailed offline strategy is shared prior to its full development. The Consultative Meeting today will present this after long. It kick starts a process that will gather the feedback and contributions from WASAG founders who consists of a few members, government agencies, international organisations, research institutions, advocacy groups, and professional organisations. All partners are expected to contribute to the formulation of the strategy, leading to its adoption by the Steering Committee later this year and to its subsequent implementation. We all, therefore, need to own this strategy. Furthermore, I would like to stress that WASAC is an important component of FAO's water journey.The WASAG strategy aims to transform water scarcity challenges into an opportunity that will contribute to the four better, the better production, the better nutrition, the better environment, the better life in line with FAO's strategic framework work. I really look forward to the fruitful discussion today. I apologise that I will not be able to stay through after the consultation, but I hope I could catch up on major suggestions and guidance later together with my team. Let me thank you, Yung and myself, for your contributions today, and also your contributions in the incoming months to develop this strategy. Thank you. Thank you for your attention.
Boroto
Thank you, Mr. Liefeng Li. We'll now proceed with providing some updates on And before we dwell into the topic, just to give some updates on the process itself. Just a second. So today is the second of the two meetings that we are organising. One took place yesterday afternoon, and the second one is today. Then this was done to accommodate the participants from different time zones. Yesterday after the meeting, we quickly took note of the comments that we received, and we will share them earlier today after we have the input from the participants or the presentation from Anya Grobeke. You are welcome to post your comments in the chat box. If there is no time to take the floor, please mute your phone or your microphone when you are not talking. Again, as already stated by Mr. Ali Fengli, this is a kick-off meeting of the consultative process. More comments will be expected from partners. In order to keep a memory of this event, maybe at this stage, before we proceed into the consultation itself, I will ask us to to open our mic, not our microphones, but our videos so that for a meet, we just take a group photo since some of us might not be able to stay in throughout.So please stop sharing and then we can take a group photo and we proceed. Can we open your videos so we can see you? We wait for others to show their faces. Please open your videos. Thank you for those who have done it. We will now go back to the presentation. I As you heard it already, that some of us who are here participated in the high-level Romewater Dialogue last year on the 17th of October 2024. Some key decisions were taken during the meeting. The first one was to formalise the arrangement to host WASAG International Forums. This was not part of the initial TORs of WASAG, but it emerged as a de facto mechanism for advancing the agenda of WASAG, because prior to the Rome Water Dialogue, we had two international forums in Capo Verde in prior, in 2019, in in March then and then in February 2023. That was the first decision, and it will be taking every second year on a rotational basis. We started in Capo Verde, yes, but then the future forums will be taking place in different regions. If no region comes forward, then Capo Verde will be the host by default.The other decision was that the plenary assembly will also take place here in Rome every second year, alternating with the international forums. The third decision was that the steering committee, what initially was made of the different categories of WASAC partners, member countries, UN agencies, research institutions, civil society organisations, and private and professional organisations, will now be made of member countries. As we heard, this steering committee was established and held its first meeting two months ago. This is the composition of the steering committee. It is shared by His Excellency, the Prime Minister of Capoverde. I wish to acknowledge in this room the presence of our vice chair, the special water envoy from the Netherlands, Ms. Maaike van Hynkekeen. Hopefully, Maaike, you can say some few words when we close this meeting. Then all the regions that you see listed there, Africa has Morocco and Zimbabwe, Asia, India, and Indonesia, Europe, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, Latin America, Caribbean, Honduras, and Mexico, Mexico. The near east is Egypt and Jordan, North America is USA, representing USA and Canada, Southwest Pacific, we're still waiting for them to nominate a member. We are in conversation with two Two international financial institutions also to join the steering committee.You will hear about the process of establishing a technical advisory committee. So once the chair is elected, he will also be part of this steering committee together with the Director of Land and Water of FAO, the two last one, the Chair of the TAC and the Director being non-voting members of the steering committee or ex-official. This is how the new WASAG operating mechanism look like. To the right at the bottom, you have the partners. The third category are the member nations. The second category is the traditional partners. That's UN agencies and IFIs as research institutions, civil society organisations, private sector, and professional organisations. Then we have the steering committee, which steers the business of WASAG. As we said, it already had its first meeting on the 19th of March 2025. For us as a Secretariat, having this first meeting and experimenting the commitment of our member states as representing the regional groups, gave us comfort that WASAG is being taken seriously and is now set to achieve the impact that it is meant to achieve to respond to this challenge of water scarcity in agriculture and the context of climate change. Then we have the Plenary Assembly, which will be organised, convened by the steering committee.The first Plenary Assembly is planned in March But that might be revised, and I'll explain later why. Then to the left, you have the working groups and the task forces of WASAG. You heard already that we have six working groups. These working groups report to the Technical Advisory Committee. The Technical Advisory Committee provides technical and scientific leadership to the work of WASAG, whereas the steering committee provides strategy and guidance. Then the Technical Advisory Committee is responsible for organising the international forum. Following the meeting that we had in October, that's a high-level dialogue, after the two international forums that were hosted by Capoverde during that meeting, we were looking for a third host for the next forum. No one came publicly in the plenary, but soon after the meeting, the Dominican Republic came to us. In fact, they were introduced to us by the Minister of Agriculture of Capoverde, and they expressed their interest to host the meeting at the third WASAG International Forum. Since October to date, we have been talking to the Dominican Republic. We had a filled mission in February 2025 to see what is happening and to start engaging with the host.Last week, we were in Nebraska, Lincoln, at the Global Waterful Food Conference. We were there with the executive director of our host institution there who will be hosting the forum, and the representative of the Fawo Dominican Republic will be in charge of the logistics. And soon after this last week, the executive director of TNR, the host institution, went back and reported to the President of the Republic, of the Dominican Republic. This is to say how much political commitment there is to host this forum. And the President of the Republic, of the Dominican Republic, requested that this forum is postponed by two months in May 2026 for many reasons, one of them being that it will be the off-the-peak tourism season decision, which happens to be around March and March every year, which would also then have disruption on the forum. This is now the final decision that the forum will take place in March 2026. Together with the preparation of the forum, we are preparing a project in the field that will demonstrate what WASAG can do and can offer to the Dominican Republic. Because the forum is that is being placed in Latin America and Caribbean, we expect a strong involvement of the Latin American and Caribbean as well as the North American regions.This is, I think, where we are now. Then I will give the floor to Anja Grobeke, our Senior Advisor, to give us an outline of the strategy. After she speaks, before we move into discussions, I will give a summary of the inputs that we received from the consultation yesterday. Anja, over to you.
Ania Grobicki
Thank you very much indeed, Jehan. Good morning, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us, and we really look forward to your comments on this annotated outline of the strategy, which was already shared with the steering committee members, and now we share it with all of you. We really look forward to your continuing input and collaboration as we go forward in developing the strategy. My name is Anja Grubitsky. As Jean mentioned, I'm a Senior Water Advisor to FAO within the Land and Water Division, so I I work on a consultancy basis, and I would really like to thank FAO for selecting me to develop this WASAG strategy. I've been involved with WASAG from the time it was launched in 2016 in various capacities, and this is a very exciting journey that we're on now in the second phase of WASAG. Without further ado, I want to just go very quickly through these points, many of which were already made by Dr. Lee and Mr. Jean Burotteau. Water scarcity is certainly one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century. Agriculture is both a cause and a victim of this water scarcity because agriculture accounts for an estimated 70% of global fresh water withdrawals worldwide.Of course, this varies enormously from country to country. Climate change intensifies water extremes like droughts and floods and causes higher temperatures. All of this is causing disruption and raising water demand overall in agriculture. Water withdrawals have grown over the last 100 years at almost twice the population rate, and so there is increasing competition for the water that is available. A 50% increase in food demand is expected by 2050. So indeed, to ensure food security is going to be absolutely essential to address water scarcity in the best way and to interact with many other sectors which are also now looking at water scarcity and water security issues. I won't dwell on this. The As I mentioned, WASAG launched in 2016. It's been a growing partnership ever since then. Some very active and committed partners indeed in the various working groups. Already in 2018 and again in 2020, WASAG was asked to report to FAO's Committee on Agriculture, COAG, in terms of its key role in helping agriculture adapt to increasing water scarcity Committee. This was again recognised by the FAO Water Conference in 2023, and WASAG was asked to report to the FAO Council. In 2024, at the Rome Water Dialogue, the Rome Declaration on Water Scarcity in Agriculture was adopted.As Jean Burotte mentioned, a member-led steering committee was established at that time to guide strategy and mobilise commitments. The Steering Committee met for the first time in March 2025. The vision for WASAG, which was established, was a world whose food systems are secure and resilient to increasing water scarcity and a changing climate. Its mission is to support progress on improving and adapting to sustainable agricultural systems in conditions of increasing water scarcity and a changing climate through collaboration among partners. So the partners are really key to the way in which WASAG functions. The seven objectives of WASAG are the advocating for political prioritisation, cooperating on work programmes, sharing and disseminating knowledge and experience, developing new or improved solutions, promoting sustainable and integrated water resources management, building the capacity of partners and countries and other stakeholders, and finally, contributing to consistent monitoring systems. Now, what is WASAG aiming to achieve during this next strategy period? First of all, to support countries in driving urgent impactful adaptation and in building long-term resilience to agricultural water scarcity. Secondly, to align with WASAG's existing vision, mission, and objectives, which were shared with you in the last slide, and to guide the implementation of the 2024 Rome Declaration on Water Scarcity in Agriculture.Here I would like to really acknowledge that we are building on wonderful work that's already been done in two of the FAO regions, namely the Water Scarcity Initiative that has been running in the WASAG... Sorry, Water Scarcity Initiative in the Nena region for about 10 years already. The second region, which has been very active indeed on water scarcity issues, has been the Asia Pacific region, where a number of countries have been participating in a water scarcity initiative there. Now, the elements of the new strategy for WASAC. I'll be discussing the theory of change in more detail, but Broadly, we have focused in on four outcome pillars, catalysing policy development by countries to address water scarcity in an integrated way, driving scientific research and technical innovation education for water-wise agricultural production, supporting knowledge management, capacity building, training, and awareness raising to address water scarcity at all levels, from national to local, This is really the scaling up and scaling out of WASAG initiatives and the knowledge products that are being produced by the working groups and task forces. Finally, fostering increased to finance for water infrastructure, resilience building, disaster risk reduction, and other investments to support farmers on the ground.This is building on the excellent work that was done by the cross-cutting finance Working Group that has been working since the establishment of WASAG. I'd like to share with you a diagram which was developed and discussed through many technical working meetings with the previous steering committee members and technical advisors, various collaborators and partners with WASAG. In the new phase of WASAG, I think it's very important to stress that there's a desire to see WESAG WASAG building on the previous work that was done, which was focused more on the left-hand side of this diagram, on the technical networking, farmer support, developing knowledge products, which are technical relevance, which had some policy recommendations, but there was not really a mechanism to develop these policy recommendations. In this second phase of WASAG, this is the mechanism, the structure that's now been established with a member-led steering committee, and hence, WASAG is now poised for high-impact policy development as well. This is a hybrid business model that is going to focus both on the technical innovation and on the policy development side, and stressing that the WASAG works at all levels, from the local subnational levels to the national level, at regional level, as has already been mentioned, and at global level.So in terms of the implementation levels of the four outcome pillars that I presented in the previous slide, it's important to note that for each pillar, then the strategy will build out the outputs of that pillar, the inputs, the actions, and the risks, and the barriers that are relevant at each level. And in terms of the new WASAG structure, the steering committee will be overseeing the roles, responsibilities, and the outcomes, and crucially, providing the strategic guidance that is necessary as we go forward. The Technical Advisory Committee will lead the implementation of the strategy with activities carried out by the working groups, which have, as I mentioned, been really focusing on technical innovation, and then time-bound task forces being established to take forward policy recommendations, and there can also be technical task forces established. As the task forces do their work, if there is sufficient support, if there is continual work that needs to be done on that particular topic, such a time-bound task force can then be converted into a working group. Finally, of course, sorry, the WASAG support Our team is providing administrative support through FAO, and we're very grateful to them for all the excellent work that they do in helping WASAG to function day by day.In terms of building out the theory of change, it's quite important to have a goal statement that brings all of this into focus. This is a diagram which is attempting to really show how WASAG functions in terms of both the structure, the policy, the content. It's an if, then, because statement. On the left-hand side of this diagram, you have the if statement. If WASAG catalyses the updated policy development, the technical interventions, capacity building, and investments required, in other words, the four pillars of the strategy, in order to urgently address increasing water scarcity agriculture. Then, the then statement is on the top right, then countries will implement updated policies, plans, and regulations that help deliver food, energy, and water security to their people. This is emphasising that this is really an integrated approach looking at the needs across sectors. Finally, the because statement that underpins the WASAG functioning. Because increased infrastructure investment and other finance, knowledge, data, innovation, and capacity building will flow via farmers and other partners to support socioeconomic and technological change. So as you can see in the middle, the steering committee and COAG are absolutely central in terms of driving the policy change, the policy development that can happen through the work of WASAG.The WASAG Technical Advisory Committee and the working groups are key to providing all the underpinning in terms of both in terms of policy recommendations and the technical innovation, the financing, and the capacity-building work that needs to happen in order to underpin WASAG. Linking the then statements and the because statements, you have the increased The dynamism which WASAG hopes to really underpin in the second phase of its functioning in order to underpin the changes that are required and in order to adapt to climate change and to build resilience through the national policy development and implementation. Here, I also want to emphasise that at global level, the WASAG strategy needs to really be part of the broader UN system, the strategies and policies that so many UN agencies are working on. In particular, I'd like to mention here the system-wide strategy on water supply and sanitation through the UN Water System, which brings all the UN agencies together. That focuses on SDG 6. Then finally, the roles of the partners and the member countries. Partners contribute to the knowledge and resources flowing through the technical innovation route. Up at the top, again, the knowledge and resources from the member countries, these crucial contributions in particular to policy development, where countries and regions can learn from each other in how to adapt to this threat and increased risks.Here, I'd like to show how the WASAG strategy is intended to link to and support the FAO strategic framework. It's a 10-year framework from 2022 to 2031, as you can see on the left-hand side of your screen. Hence, we are proposing that the WASAG strategy runs for six years, not for four years like the previous strategy did, and this is through to 2031 in order to harmonise with the FAO strategic framework. To to support the key objectives of the FAO strategic framework, which, as Liefang Li mentioned in his introductory address today, are better production, better environment, better nutrition, and a better life for all, leaving no one behind. On the right-hand side of the diagram, you can see the four pillars of WASAG in terms of policy development, research and innovation, capacity building, and finance and investment. This is just a shortened version of what you saw earlier on the slide. I'd like to emphasise that to date and also in terms of the six working groups, which I'll present shortly, the main interactions and inputs to the FAO strategic framework have been through the better production and better environment areas, but in the future, also through the work of the task forces and the continued work of the working groups, better nutrition and a better life will also be much more strongly addressed in terms of socio-technical innovation.And I'd like to mention, of course, there is a Water Nutrition Working Group that has been doing fantastic work already and contributing to the better nutrition area of the FAO strategic The six working groups within YASAG currently are water and migration, drought preparedness, financing mechanisms, water and nutrition, sustainable agricultural water management, and saline agriculture. As I mentioned, financing mechanisms has been working in a cross-cutting way, working with all the working groups. Then the eight task forces which have already been proposed, and some of them are already beginning their work, are inclusive farmer-led water management, unconventional sources of water, dry land agriculture, innovation technology, technology, data, and Science, Capacity Building involving Women and youth, integrated group focusing on the Water, Energy, Food, and Environment Nexus, Ecosystem-based Solutions, and Nature-based Solutions Group, which has already started working, and a Water and Livestock Group, which was proposed in the first Steering Committee meeting earlier this year of the new Steering Committee. I'd like to mention yesterday, I think John Burotte will say more on this topic, but in the discussion and consultative process yesterday, it was suggested to have another a cross-cutting task force, which would be a regional task force working with all the working groups and other task forces.Every strategy needs an implementation plan, and the elements of the implementation plan that we're proposing to build out are, of course, the activities and the inputs needed to the four pillars, the strong development of partnerships, many more partners are needed to be involved in order to scale up and scale out the work of WASAG, a capacity building training aspects, which, again, need to be scaled up and scaled out, developing a communication strategy, developing a resource mobilisation strategy for WASAG, including the roles and contributions of the WASAG member countries. These are two very important sub-strategies which will be sketched out in this main strategy, but will then be developed in more detail by the West Ag support team. Finally, very importantly, as mandated at the first meeting of steering committee, which talked about this a lot, the need to develop a monitoring and evaluation plan and setting key performance indicators for evaluation. And indeed, in yesterday's consultation, it was already proposed that there should be a midterm evaluation in 2028, given that the strategy period This is a long one. And finally, just some elements of the monitoring and evaluation plan. The purpose of this plan is to outline how the indicators and targets are to be developed and set for each of the four outcome pillars of the new WASAG strategy and at the relevant implementation levels from local to national, regional, and global levels.The proposed indicators and targets for monitoring, first of all, we need to have key performance indicators or KPIs set at outcome level, and then more detailed targets to be set at input and activity levels in order to monitor progress. So that is my input here. Thank you very much indeed for listening, and I'll be online to discuss. Please do, in addition to raising your hand, to participate in the discussion online. You can also put your comments in the chat box, or you can email any further questions waterscaresity@fao. Org as the consultation process continues. Thank you very much indeed.
