The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) has tied up with Bimstec to build the capacity of the Bay of Bengal regional grouping to face food security challenges.
“We have signed an MoU with Bimstec,” said Dr Shahidur Rashid, director at IFPRI's South Asia regional office, during a food policy meeting in Kathmandu on Tuesday.
“Saarc has multiple problems. Geopolitical, and also related to institutional design. Bureaucrats run it. Not having an analytical unit to contribute substantially in regional conversation is also a problem,” he said while replying to a question.
“Bimstec has several focus areas. We are currently working on two areas mostly – climate change, regional trade, and investment, and the third area of our working closely is going to be agriculture and nutrition.”
IFPRI's South Asia Regional Office organized the two-day regional launching event of the Global Food Policy Report 2023, bringing together different stakeholders. Bimstec and Saarc were co-hosts.
The meeting ended on Tuesday with a call to step up efforts to develop a more permanent and sustainable response system to face climate extremes which have become the norm of South Asia.
In 2022 alone, the world faced multiple crises. Disruptions to food systems from the protracted COVID-19 pandemic, major natural disasters, civil unrest and political instability, and the growing impacts of climate change continued, as the Russia-Ukraine war and inflation exacerbated a global food and fertilizer crisis.
IFPRI said the growing number of crises, their increasing impact, and rising numbers of hungry and displaced people have galvanised calls to rethink responses to food crises, creating a real opportunity for change.
“Now is an opportune moment to create a more holistic, long-term approach to food crisis response by building on existing innovations and exploring new solutions,” it said.
Some of the recommendations from the panel discussions include developing institutions for disaster forecasting and disaster response at different levels from the local to national, regional and global levels, improving coordination and integration among stakeholders, strengthening social protection programme, forming global food security forum, strengthening science, technology and innovation system and creating a platform of free flow of information.
IFPRI said the process of improving crisis response systems should be rooted in high-quality evidence: robust data, state-of-the-art tools, and policy analyses and scenarios.
This evidence can help policymakers, donors, the international development community, and the private sector to move quickly in times of need, it said in its global report.
“Within Bimstec, we will create a core team of researchers who can crystalize analytical results and feed the leadership where there is a regional level event,” Dr Shahidur Rashid said while explaining ties between IFPRI and Bimstec.
“For example, as IFPRI, if I try to do a regional meeting of foreign ministers, I cannot do it. If I try to hold an agricultural ministers' level meeting, I cannot do it. But Bimstec holds such meetings every year. In terms of content, they are lacking. IFPRI's partnership will empower them, build the capacity to effectively engage with leaders,” he said.
“We are working with both (Saarc and Bimstec). But Bimstec, to be honest, given the current situation I see promises there. They also work with ASEAN countries. ASEAN has a lot of success stories,” he said, referring to the Southeast Asian countries association.
Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are members of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc), which was established in 1985.
Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand are members of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (Bimstec) which commenced its journey in 1997 with four countries as member-states.
