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The Food and Agriculture Organisation's new head is to be appointed on June 25 - choosing the wrong person may have dire consequences for the world's poor and hungry
Alexander Gaus and Joel Sandhu are Research Associates at the Global Public Policy Institute, Berlin, an independent non-profit think tank focusing on effective and accountable governance. The opinions expressed are their own.
With the world's attention on the contest for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) managing-director's chair, another crucial leadership question affecting millions around the world deserves its share of the spotlight. Namely, who should lead the oft forgotten Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), once the new director-general is appointed on 25 June? Choosing the wrong person to head the FAO could have dire consequences for the world's poor and hungry, since they will bear the heaviest burden of a botched FAO appointment.
Founded in 1945 with a mandate to stimulate agricultural development and increase production in food-deficit countries, the past decades have seen the FAO play a declining role in coordinating the global response to food insecurity and in assisting its member states with advice on policies and strategies for food security.
Yet, FAO's inclusive nature is needed more than ever to develop innovative solutions if we are to overcome soaring food prices, the scarcity of land and water and the pressing challenges of climate change. From boosting investment in food production and establishing agricultural information systems, to deepening private sector partnerships in the fight against hunger, the FAO can play an important role in alleviating food insecurity around the world.
Like the IMF leadership post, much of the debate in the halls of Rome, Washington and Brussels is centered on whether to award the prestige of FAO leadership to a European or an individual from the developing world. After an 18 year reign with little innovation and leadership from Senegalese Jacques Diouf as director-general of the FAO, candidates from Austria, Brazil, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq and Spain are lined up to take on the challenging task. Spain's Miguel Angel Moratinos Cuyaube and Brazil's Jose Graziano da Silva are frontrunners for the post.
However, the selection of the new FAO director-general should not be a bargaining chip connected to the IMF successor debate. The decision of who should lead the FAO must be based on merit and not on the candidate's nationality or the region they represent. The world should be mindful of whom it chooses to put at the helm of the FAO to steer the agency back on track and to address the most pressing issues on food security.
Close to 1 billion people are considered food insecure, and many more are chronically malnourished. Every day, hundreds of millions of people face a food crisis because of unbearably high food prices. Research on climate change, agriculture and food security predicts that more droughts and floods will wreak havoc in large parts of Asia and Africa in the decades ahead. Adding to this, population growth, biofuel production, changing eating habits and volatile commodities markets will further push prices up to levels beyond the reach of the poor. Paradoxically, close to 250 million tonnes of food are wasted or lost throughout the world annually. Ensuring food security for all under these circumstances is a herculean task and one of the defining challenges of our time.
The FAO, as it stands today, cannot address all these challenges. It is troubled by management deficits and a complementary lack of faith from donors, but with devoted and skilled leadership the agency can once again become the epicentre for innovative and coordinated approaches in the fight against global hunger.
To get the FAO out of crisis mode and fit to fulfil its mandate of ensuring "humanity's freedom from hunger", the new director-general will need to spell out an agenda for the FAO's role in the decades ahead.
A first step would be to remould the ossified bureaucracy that is threatening to steer the FAO into irrelevance. This means a less hierarchical and more accountable management and transparent human resource policies that reward creativity and initiative within its much disillusioned staff. The new FAO chief will require ideas and solutions to combat the structural causes of hunger and temper them with the visionary leadership necessary to serve as a skilled ambassador for the agency's interests.
To unleash the FAO's full potential, the next director-general will need to champion a non-territorial and open-minded approach, forging strong relationships to deliver the best possible cooperation between the FAO and all partners, including other Rome-based UN food agencies and partners from the private sector. If he fails, many more donors may choose to follow the United Kingdom, in openly threatening to stop funding FAO because results were not delivered.
Irrelevant of nationality, the work is cut out for whoever is appointed to lead the FAO on 25 June. What matters is the ability to deliver results and to once again make the FAO a relevant player. At the end of the day, millions will look towards the FAO to provide vital global public goods.
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