Governments have turned to FAO for support in identifying and assessing options for reforming policies on food and agriculture through the “Monitoring and Analysing Food and Agricultural Policies” (MAFAP) programme. While the first phase of FAO’s efforts concentrated more on conducting policy analysis and measuring public expenditures, this second phase built on the first phase’s outcomes to support policy reforms across Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. MAFAP has been found to be an effective and well-positioned influencer of policy reforms in the agricultural sector. However, there are areas of improvement for this programme, including: i) increased resources to better address increasing policy support demand; ii) more strategic planning; iii) more formal institutionalization and more engagement with civil society and the private sector; iv) more coherence at country level in conducting preliminary analysis; and v) improvement to its knowledge management system in order not to lose its institutional memory.

Chile has a native forest that constitutes 18 percent of its continental surface area and over 60 million hectares of protected areas. The country is considered a global hotspot of conservation priority due to its endemism and a high degree of habitat loss. The loss of ecosystems could increase if economic development does not progressively adopt sustainability standards that create less of an impact on biodiversity. From August 2015 to May 2020, FAO implemented the project in order “to develop and implement an integrated monitoring and assessment system on carbon stocks and biodiversity in forest ecosystems (SIMEF) supporting the National Greenhouse Gases Inventory (INGEI) and the design of policies, regulations and SFM practices incorporating the REDD+ Programme and biodiversity conservation in forest ecosystems”. The project established sound foundations that improve the monitoring of the conditions of forest ecosystems and, consequently, more robust information is generated and with greater frequency. It is worth highlighting the creation of an interinstitutional structure that will support the continuity of the SIMEF and the creation of a digital platform with five tools. The SIMEF is, at present, a regular programme of the Chilean State with a governance system and with a permanent annual budget. Given this, the sustainability of the achievements made in the project can be maintained and strengthened. However, a low level of appropriation of the system at local level was identified, which could affect its sustainability.

Evaluation and results-based management are amongst the best-known instruments to strengthen accountability and learning, and ultimately improve policies and practices. How are these instruments applied by Ministries of Agriculture, and are officials working in this sector equipped with adequate capacities and resources to carry out the evaluation? This report summarizes the results of a study which aimed to shed some light on these questions. The role of the Ministry of Agriculture in assessing results for sectoral public policies or programmes varies greatly between countries. Essentially, the M&E units in Ministries of Agriculture are mostly engaged in monitoring, with evaluation being quite rare. This raises the need to support M&E units to fulfill their mandate by playing a role in measuring results and drawing lessons to improve interventions in the sector and contributing to monitoring and evaluation of national policies and strategies, including the SDGs. The study was carried out over a six-month period through interviews with officers working in M&E units in 23 countries by the FAO Office of Evaluation (OED) in collaboration with EvalForward, a community of practice on evaluation for food security, agriculture, and rural development.

This fact sheet describes the course that demonstrates how strong monitoring systems of agricultural programmes can incorporate child labour indicators, suggesting useful strategies. It also provides methodologies to consider when evaluating and reporting on evidence that suggests child labour may have been impacted by an agricultural initiative.

While population growth and economic development are putting unprecedented pressure on renewable, but finite water resources, especially in arid regions, scarce land and water resources are affecting food security and sustainable water management. FAO identified the need to implement a digital database built upon remote sensing and information technologies that can monitor and report on agricultural water productivity over Africa and Near East, accessible through the FAO Water Productivity through Open access of Remotely sensed derived data portal (WaPOR). The WaPOR database is now operational at continental level (all African and Near East countries covered by the 250 m spatial resolution data), national level (two beneficiary countries can access the WaPOR database at 100 m resolution) and subnational level with a spatial resolution of about 30 m, so far including eight areas of interest (river basins or irrigation schemes). Water Accounting Plus (WA+) reports based on remote sensing have been completed for three river basins as planned (Litani in Lebanon, Awash in Ethiopia and Jordan basin). An action framework at national level for capacity building and participatory decision making is currently being developed to make effective a “demand-driven” approach based on national and local needs.