On 9 Aug, Jeannette Gurung, Executive Director and Nisha Onta, Knowledge Management Coordinator of WOCAN attended the Development Partners’ Consultative Meeting on Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) Regional Cooperation on Agriculture held by ADB Thailand Resident Mission in Bangkok, Thailand, with the theme ‘Enhanced Synergies towards Climate Friendly Agriculture.’ There were 30 participants from 16 agencies.
The objective of this consultation was to tackle the growing need for better coordination and partnership to support the agriculture sector to tackle global, regional, national and local concerns. While noting that there exist various policy and cooperation frameworks in support of the agriculture sector, there is still room for enhancing synergy. It is in this spirit that the Asian Development Bank (ADB) through the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) Working Group on Agriculture (WGA) is tasked by development partners in 2010 to host regular informal development partners’ (DP) meetings to provide platform for dialogues among the DPs. The meeting aims to share information on ongoing initiatives, explore possible areas of collaboration, and identify ways to enhance synergy among DPs.
WOCAN presented the key activities related to climate-friendly agriculture in the GMS such as the upcoming FAO-WOCAN workshop on Gender and Climate-smart Agriculture in ASEAN and also the Women’s Carbon Standard (WCS). CASPII (Core Agriculture Support Program Phase II) of ADB and Green Net Thailand expressed strong interest to collaborate with the WCS.
The overall discussion focused on capacity development both formal and non-formal and promotion of climate friendly agriculture. The participants supported the continuation of the DP meetings and suggested the following as follow up actions and next steps over the next six months:
- Circulate meeting presentations in PDF, draft summary and list of participants to development partners for reference.
- Initiate information compilation on planned activities by development partners. This could be jointly initiated by FAO and ADB WGA Secretariat. Besides sharing of information, development partners could use the information as a basis for joint collaborative activities for cost effectiveness and enhanced synergies.
- Noting that ADB through GMS Working Group on Agriculture is planning an agriculture learning program for policy makers in November 2013. Development partners are encouraged to share inputs/ideas that help addressing their policy concerned.
- Explore possibilities of compiling learning modules and develop a clearing house mechanism for capacity development in agriculture in the GMS by GMSARN and ADB WGA Secretariat.
- The next meeting was tentatively set on Friday, 13 December 2013. Suggested themes include climate financing, food security, climate change and use of ICT.