Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-31)
MS JOSETTE
SHEERAN AND
MR JOHN
AYLIEFF
22 APRIL 2008
Q20 Richard Burden: If I could bring
you on to the increasingly difficult issue of biofuels. You will
know that the EU has its target of 5% biofuel content in road
fuels by 2010 and we have our own target here in the UK, but the
link between food production and biofuels is something that is
getting a lot more attention at the moment, both in relation to
using capacity for the production of fuel that could otherwise
be used for food, but also even in areas where the biofuel production
seems to be more sustainable, for example in Brazil, there is
the issue of the knock-on effect on prices and so on. You have
very diplomatically recently said that governments need to look
more carefully at the link between the acceleration in biofuels
and food supply and give more thought to it. Can I ask you to
go a bit beyond that and say what assessment have you really made
about what is the impact of the increased use of biofuels on food
prices and on food production?
Ms Sheeran: First, access to energy
at an affordable price is a critical issue for the world's poor
and in part we are seeing farmers simply unable to farm today
because of the high cost of inputs, including diesel. So in many
countries I am very concerned about the next harvest cycles because
they are simply unable to get the fertiliser and everything that
is based on the very high price of oil. This is why I am not only
diplomatic on this issue but it is one of those issues that requires
a very careful consideration of the interlinking between needs
and demands and how food security and energy now are so closely
linked. It is a fact that perhaps for the first time in history
food and fuel markets are now interlinked in a way that food prices
and food demand is very linked to what is happening in energy
markets, and this creates some new uncertainties, such as if the
world were to produce more food next year would it go to energy
uses or food? It really depends on what the price of oil is and
what those larger dynamics are. So it does require looking at
their supply and what inputs are used and I really leave that
to the experts to look at the broader effects of this. We are
seeing—and this is really a global phenomenon—that
when the oil price is very high it becomes very attractive to
use virtually anything that grows in the energy system and we
now have the technologies to produce fuel from virtually anything
that grows. So we are seeing palm oil and maize and wheat and
oil seeds and cassava and sugar being used for biofuels. Our biggest
urging—this may be a long-term opportunity for farmers;
there may be some crops that make better sense than others—is
that the experts really get busy looking at its impact and the
fact that these markets are now interlinked and the need for renewable,
accessible, affordable fuel is also very critical for the farmers
and the poor, and critical to solving the hunger problem. I know
I am not giving you great solutions there.
Q21 Richard Burden: Whilst the experts
are looking at that—and I am sure you are right, there is
a very delicate and complex inter-relationship there, which I
think none of us have fully grasped yet, the issue of climate
change is a major, major issue—whilst that study is going
on and maybe investments are going on in extra technologies, looking
at whether biofuels can be produced in a more sustainable way,
the issue of rising food prices and chronic food insecurity in
whole parts of the globe is there right now. In a sense whilst
we are looking at the long term do you have a sense of what you
should be doing in the short term?
Ms Sheeran: We do feel and have
put forward with FAO[5]
and IFAD[6]
and WFP, which are the Rome-based agencies, but now interlinking
with UNDP[7]
and UNICEF and the World Bank and others, we are developing a
short-term, medium-term and long-term response to the soaring
food prices, all of which, by the way, if markets changed tomorrow
are urgent business for the world, to look at the global food
supply system, the plight of the poor farmer and finding permanent
solutions to this. I have called the Hunger MDG the Gateway MDG
because really you cannot reach any of these other goals without
solving the hunger problem. Again, biofuels is one of the factors
that I think is contributing to tight supplies and increased demand
but there is a complex array of factors doing that. So we are
really urging those institutions that focus more on a global economy
and these kind of macro factors and how they interconnect as the
World Bank is doing, in calling for a new deal on global food
policy, and the IMF[8]—recently
Dominique Strauss-Kahn did a piece in the Financial Times.
I think this is the right kind of attention at the economic factors
that are interlinking to cause this kind of challenge that the
world is facing right now. We hope that the problem gets solved
because the pressure on WFP is greatly increased with all these
rising demands and we would much rather see long-term permanent
solutions to hunger. But it is our business to really meet those
urgent needs as they present themselves.
Q22 Sir Robert Smith: I should remind
the Committee of my entry in the Register of Members' Interests
that I own a farm from which I get rental income, which is relevant
to this inquiry. On the role of the WFP in enabling development,
feeding in schools and nutritional supplements for maternity,
the 2005 evaluation, I understand, did not actually find that
there was sufficient evidence of a positive impact of such activities.
Has anything been done since 2005 to look at these programmes?
Ms Sheeran: We do think that assessment
did demonstrate that there is a solid body of work that has potential
there, that we have been doing. Certainly in the whole range of
developmental work it is often hard, because there are so many
factors that deal with long-term development, to ensure that they
are having the broad ranging permanent kind of effects that they
have. Our development portfolio has been greatly reduced with
all the emergencies we have had. We have had four times the natural
disasters today that we did in the 1980s, but we do feel that
there is tremendous benefit to the kinds of interventions we do
and we feel very solid evidence, for example in our new report
on the long-term impacts of malnutrition and the critical interventions
with mother/child health or with HIV/AIDS patients, in ensuring
that the nutritional base is met. If I could for a moment show
you, this is a red cup that I take with me everywhere. This is
from our school feeding site in Rwanda and I often use this to
demonstrate how a little bit can have such a huge impact because
for many of the kids that we reach it is the only guaranteed food
that they will have every day. I think for the first time really
in history we can ask not only is the cup full but what is in
the cup? If we put a drop of vitamin A in there we are reaching
20 million kids a year and with governments that number increases
exponentially in the intervention with the very vulnerable group
of children that happens through this cup. We have never really
been able to ask—back in the days we got what was offered
in the surplus programme where the knowledge of nutritional interventions
was not that strong—what is in the cup, but we now know
that if we put two cents' worth of vitamin sprinkles in here it
dramatically changes the nutritional base for a kid and we can
address basic nutritional needs. So I think this kind of work
is critical. If I could for one moment give one example of how
we are using local purchase to help with long-term development?
In Senegal they produce an excess of salt and most of the salt
for export is iodised but most of the salt for local consumption
is not. So WFP is trying to look at how we do our interventions
to have as long-term a developmental impact as possible. So in
Senegal we decided to buy our salt from 7,000 village producers
for our Senegal programme and invested in them the technology
and the training to iodise salt. Today we supply 100% of our needs
in Senegal from the 7,000, mostly women, producers at the village
level, but they also iodise their salt for local sale. This deals
with one of the major health problems Senegal faces, which is
goitre. I am not saying this is the answer to everything but what
I am saying is we are very busily looking at virtually all of
our interventions and how we can do them in a way that embeds
a long-term developmental response. I call this a revolution in
food aid because, if we look at every intervention and ask how
it can be as sustainable as possible and as developmentally beneficial
as possible, I think we begin to embed within food aid solutions
that can hand off to other partners.
Q23 Sir Robert Smith: The more recent
research is saying on the mechanics that if you give someone the
supplements there is a benefit, but is it saying whether the WFP
enabling programme is the right route or whether other agencies
in the way they do their own programmes should be taking on board
that nutritional information?
Ms Sheeran: I think it is a partnership
right now. WFP, WHO and UNICEF have formed a triumvirate to make
sure that our nutritional programmes draw on the expertise of
each agency. We do virtually all of these things in concert now.
I think that is critical because none of us has the complete information
or understanding without drawing on the expertise of others, so
this kind of drawing on the strength of each agency and making
sure we are doing this. We just did two pilots, one in Mauritania,
which looked at how you get at the under-five nutritional challenge,
and found that there was something like 30 different types of
interventions that would be needed to really have a comprehensive
response to that, drawing out virtually the entire UN and local
government system. WFP was involved in a number of those, UNICEF
in a number of those, and WHO. It just demonstrated that this
really requires a team effort to get at these issues. We have
found that specifically those three agencies are vital to virtually
all these interventions. WFP is reaching people, many millions
of people, and developing our expertise, which we do not have
to build in. WHO has it. FAO has a great nutrition team, as does
UNICEF, so they can help inform us about how to do this. We are
also drawing on the private sector, DSM and others, to draw on
their expertise of how to do this better. I think that is the
future and how to get better at having maximum results. If you
do not mind, can we see if John has anything to add, since he
does our assessments?
Mr Aylieff: Only that you have
stressed very much the key issue here, which is partnerships,
because malnutrition is driven by more than just food and caloric
intake of food. We need very much to have a partnership with actors
in the health and nutrition sectors. What we have is a massive
outreach—20 million schoolchildren currently would be one
example of this—and what we can offer in partnership with
others is a platform where all those needs across the health,
nutritional and food areas can be dealt with through one platform.
Again, taking the example of the school, there has been research
showing that giving a meal in school boosts attendance, and in
our programming we have made that particularly geared towards
girls' education. We have had quite a lot of success in places
like Afghanistan and Pakistan in that area. In addition to boosting
attendance, with UNICEF and NGOs we have run de-worming programmes
for children so that what they are consuming has a much better
intake. We are dealing through the provision of much more micronutrient-rich
foods within those programmes with some of the micronutrient-driven
malnutrition which the Executive Director has mentioned. I think
this is a good platform. It is about partnership and I think perhaps
where some of our development programmes have gone wrong in the
past—I am talking about the past 30 years now, the whole
history of WFP—is in having insufficient partnerships to
back up those programmes and to ensure that they have the greatest
impact possible.
Q24 Daniel Kawczynski: Could I ask
you how you will make the transition from being a food aid to
a food assistance agency and what your donors think about that?
Ms Sheeran: This is currently
the discussion that we have going on with our Executive Board,
which includes 36 nations. Again, really only recently have we
had the option of asking how we specifically do business, because
we now have over half our budget that is cash, which allows for
greater flexibility. For example, in this proposal that we put
together for the Board, it would look at embedding our work in
a much more coherent way with the long-term development agencies
so that there is almost a seamless transition of what I call the
value chain of hunger. Often we see a gulf between emergency activities,
long-term development, where societies can keep cycling back into
the hunger zone. One of the proposals is what I call our 80/80/80
solution, which is actually something we are already doing with
the cash we have. Eighty per cent of our cash for food is spent
procuring food in the developing world. This is a win-win situation,
as I just pointed out in Senegal, where we buy from the 7,000
village producers. They have their first secure income ever. It
allows them to invest in the technology to do it better. Eighty
per cent of our land transportation is locally procured, which
enables us to build in capability in trucking and infrastructure,
storage and warehousing that is left behind when we leave. So
we give birth to many local transportation and infrastructure
solutions that are so critical to solving hunger in the end. Eighty
per cent of our staff are hired locally within country and they
become very expert at food security systems, which helps, again,
embed local solutions and investment in local economies. I do
not know of any other organisation that is so deeply embedded
now economically in the very countries where the challenges are.
In our strategic plan we are also proposing a broader toolbox
of response, so if the question is hunger when all systems collapse,
sometimes one response will be better than the other. Sometimes
you have to bring in commodities from the outside, like Darfur,
sometimes local purchase would be the answer because the food
is just not getting off the small farms. In the Democratic Republic
of Congo last year we increased threefold our local purchase in
a conflict zone where the farmers' food would be trapped and would
never even go to market. We have the logistical capability to
be able to get that out of the farms and use that in our programmes.
This is really a win, because you are protecting livelihoods as
you do that. We are also asking for our Board to endorse an exploration
of vouchers and cash where they are appropriate, and to develop
our expertise to use that tool when appropriate. We really want
to look at both the toolbox that we have, the level of nutritional
intervention that is appropriate in those programmes, and also
the use of our very process of providing emergency help to help
build in the solutions. I do think that food for work, food for
assets, where you rebuild the food infrastructure rather than
just handing out food, becomes key in this also, so hopefully
we can then pass on to long-term partners a functioning food security
system that can then be a basis for further development.
Q25 Daniel Kawczynski: Your Executive
Board I think will make a decision potentially in June. Could
you indicate—I do not want to put you on the spot—whether
you are likely to succeed in pushing this through with them?
Ms Sheeran: Fortunately, we have
ensured that this is not a mystery process. We have had seven
formal consultations with the Board, starting in August. We decided
to start the whole strategic plan by really laying out the value
chain of hunger from emergencies to prevention of emergencies
and crisis to the handover from emergencies to long-term development
and who are the key players in each zone and where gaps are in
the system and what WFP can uniquely offer. We built the strategic
plan from that, looking at what WFP's unique role could be, and
we have refined this repeatedly over the past six to seven months,
including, I think, the first ever full-day consultation with
our key NGO partners to get their input and consultations at the
country level with the countries themselves that are part of this.
This is a very informed document. We have just finished our last
consultation and we will refine the draft yet again based on the
input of all our UN partners, and I think we are fairly close
at least to a zone of winning the support that we will need to
go forward with that.
Q26 Chairman: The World Food Programme,
and indeed other UN agencies, have a good reputation for very
rapid response to emergencies, but the UN has a terrible reputation
for rapid organisational change and response. We had evidence
from Professor Haddad from the Institute of Development Studies,
and you have already indicated you are doing more of that, that
the agencies, particularly the Rome-based agencies, should co-ordinate
more. How do you think that could be better done? He specifically
says "very few truly joint initiatives manage to transcend
the institutional fights for resources and media limelight."[9]
The Committee had an experience when looking at the earthquake
in Pakistan. We simply asked for a meeting with the UN and that
was the first instance of the lead cluster operating. When we
actually went into the room there were 24 people representing
different United Nations organisations. By the time we had completed
the introductions the meeting was nearly over! Can you perhaps
give some indication that you do have the ability to respond in
a co-ordinated way and how you feel that could be done?
Ms Sheeran: This is a critical
area to explore. First, for WFP, our focus is hunger, which sometimes
involves agriculture and food production but often at other times
involves conflict, marginalisation of people, attitudes towards
women, children and the vulnerable, so hunger itself is not always
about agriculture and food and food production. As we know, there
is enough food in the world today to feed people, and we have
860 million people and growing who are abjectly hungry. I just
point that out because the range of partners we need is very varied
and sometimes it is the Rome-based FAO/IFAD agricultural experts
but actually our biggest partner in the UN is UNICEF, and the
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is probably our most totally
coherent partner in that we do all the food for all the refugee
work and we work hand-in-glove everywhere in the world. I also
mentioned that a huge part of our network is over 3,000 NGO partners
around the world, all the major NGOs and Red Cross/Red Crescent
movement but also local NGOs, community NGOs, because our whole
philosophy of delivery is that we do the major pipeline and the
last mile, whenever possible, is done by local experts who have
the understanding at the village level. There is virtually nothing
we do that is not an extensive network of activity. With the Rome-based
agencies, we have just completed a report that demonstrates hundreds
of projects, many of them really inspiring, that we do together.
There is probably more that can be done, simple things. For example,
last year we did a joint energy bid for all our buildings in Rome
and it saved a lot of money. We have looked at combining offices
out in the field; that saved a lot of money. We are working very
closely on some very exciting projects, such as working with FAO
and IFAD on our local purchase initiative, which we are calling
Purchase for Progress, where in Mozambique, if we provide a guaranteed
sale for farmers, they can then get the credit and the seeds and
the fertiliser to help increase yields and break the cycle of
poverty. We are doing this together as three agencies rather than
just WFP with its purchases. That does not mean to say there is
not more room for growth and a coherent response, and we find,
particularly on hunger, which is what we focus on every day, it
just requires working with social protection people, with peace
and security—now in Haiti the Department of Peacekeeping
wants to work very closely with us because food is about peace
and stability also.
Q27 Chairman: I think you are arguing
that, apart from just being an emergency response to hunger, you
should have more in your programme to actually prevent hunger,
something which DFID does not appear to agree with. That is where
the strategy is going. The point really is, are you going to be
able to put yourself forward, or are you putting yourself forward
as an agency that wants to lead on that, or are you going to have
to defer to somebody else? People need to know who is actually
going to provide the leadership.
Ms Sheeran: I would make two points
on that without coming to a conclusion, because I think we are
in the middle of a global discussion about how best to handle
this. One is I think the President of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick,
pointed out that the investment in the hunger/malnutrition MDG
is about 10% of what the very worthy investment is globally in
HIV/AIDS—in the long-term solution to hunger and malnutrition
and the cost to societies are huge. We recently did a study in
Latin America that showed 11% of GDP can be lost without that
investment. I do think this latest challenge, with the soaring
prices, will have the world focus on how critical it is to invest
in the food security/nutritional infrastructure of the world.
Some of that is emergency work but a lot of that is longer-term
developmental work. We will at least be a cheerleader for that
work in all the different aspects that it can happen as the only
organisation maybe in the world that focuses solely on the issue
of hunger. Sometimes I feel like the soldier who comes back and
becomes a great advocate for peace because they have seen the
face of war. It just takes seeing a few mothers unable to answer
the cry of their children to say we need to get out of this business
of hunger in the world. What is intriguing to me is that the world
actually knows how to solve the hunger problem. It does not require
a new scientific breakthrough. I do think we are hopefully at
the time in history when we have decided that hunger is simply
an unacceptable part of the human condition. It requires everyone—governments
deciding it is unacceptable, rebel groups deciding it is an unacceptable
tool to isolate people from food, all of us deciding that it is
the top of the political agenda—to say this is no longer
acceptable. You cannot cut off what is usually women and children
from access to basic food as a tool of war or politics or deny
the kind of investment needed to ensure basic food security. We
will be a voice on that. We will try to be part of the solution.
We will try as much as possible to hand into the long-term work
of the World Bank, the IMF, UNICEF and everyone on this. It is
my hope and dream that in our lifetime we will see the world get
very serious about hunger and making it part of history.
Q28 Jim Sheridan: I have just read
the very interesting article in The Economist with the
rather profound comparison made of this being a silent tsunami.
In answer to the previous question you indicated that you would
provide us with figures for security costs which comes out of
your budget. That would be of real interest to the Committee if
we could have those figures.
Ms Sheeran: I think we have them
here. It is $47 million a year and, with our overhead budget of
7%, that is probably nearing 20% of our overhead budget.
Q29 Hugh Bayley: Ms Sheeran, your
last answer left me deeply depressed. The donor community desperately
wants the UN to reform, to streamline its operations, and your
answer makes me think the UN just does not get it, and I think
that is very serious. I think in the longer term donors are going
to become more and more reluctant to support a UN structure which
is so fragmented. We face a global food crisis which is pushing
more and more people over the brink into hunger. We know that
we need a response which is multifaceted, which deals with child
nutrition and global economics and energy policy as well as putting
food in people's bellies, yet I see no serious moves from the
UN to streamline its operations, to merge agencies, to cut down
on bureaucracy, to put more resources into dealing with global
problems. Just because you deal with problems that tear at people's
heartstrings, like hunger and child health and reproductive rights
and human rights and refugees, it is not a reason for inaction.
It is all the more reason for action, because we want more efficiency
and more delivery. Would this not be a classic case where there
is a growing human need for action on the global food system to
actually provoke UN change and some agency mergers and some cuts
of bureaucracy? Why is it not happening?
Ms Sheeran: I am trying to think
of what I said to leave you with any impression that was different
than what you have just outlined.
Q30 Hugh Bayley: You seem to be justifying
the status quo and saying "We will co-operate a bit more
together and we will try and share some offices in the field,"
but something radical needs to be done. The UN is a huge bureaucracy,
which makes it much less efficient than it otherwise would be.
It has some incredibly important missions and I believe those
are weakened and undermined by the failure to reform. When is
the UN going to get serious about reform?
Ms Sheeran: I will tell you that
I have seen in response to this food crisis a pulling together
not only of the UN system but the global system as I have never
seen before. The Secretary-General just pulled together all the
agencies of the UN to come up with a coherent response, in fact
organised by Sir John Holmes in his role as OCHA[10]
Co-ordinator, and virtually everything we have done in response
to this crisis is to develop a short-term, medium-term and long-term
plan that really looks at the role that individual expertise and
agencies can bring to the table to contribute in a coherent way
to that response. Each agency was started with a different mandate
for a different reason. I was not there when all these were born.
I think the key is: can we bring those to bear in a coherent way
to provide solutions when the challenges come? I do see that happening
in the food prices. It has to. I was trying to make the point
that with hunger it can never be a single agency solution because
while the High Commissioner for Refugees has a responsibility
for protection, I think they accept that they do not have to be
a food delivery expert to do that. I will just give you a couple
of examples that I hope will leave you hopeful. When I came to
WFP, I immediately went down to the humanitarian response depot—and
I think you all went to the one in Accra. This is the result of
a major humanitarian reform in the UN, which ended up with a cluster
system but also with WFP being the lead agency in co-ordinating
logistics. What happened over the decades when WFP was delivering
food is we became an expert on huge pipelines, and the question
someone else asked—I cannot take any credit for it—is,
does the world really need 10 pipelines? No, it does not. So WFP
can virtually reach any corner of the globe in 48 hours, as we
proved in Lebanon, when we were in there, reaching 800,000 people
with a customised basket. It was not just food: it was medicines
from WHO, water, tents. That was all pre-positioned and all negotiated
with governments, the landing rights and access to be able to
get it in. That is a huge reform. It is not a fractured system;
it is one response happening. Margaret Chan of WHO, for example—we
do all their delivery of medicines now globally. That is a huge
change in how institutions function. If you think about the UK
government and all the different departments—Treasury, Education,
and all this—they all have different mandates but to be
able to combine strengths for solutions I think is key. I think
there have been some things; in fact, in the Coherence Panel we
found that the humanitarian area had really gone through much
more reform and coherence, with a couple of areas still needing
exploration, like the handover, the early recovery area and the
IDP area, but huge improvements, and that handover to long-term
development I think is where we identified not only a gap but
sometimes a chasm. The only thing I can think is, rather than
WFP becoming permanently a development agency, making sure we
provide strong handshakes between what we do and the long-term,
permanent solutions in the area of expertise we have. I think
the new Secretary-General's endorsement of the Delivering as
One report, the fact that this is being debated in the UN
... I will tell you I ran the process on business harmonisation
in the UN. The fact is that everything is apples and oranges in
UN systems. You could not even cross-check accounting systems,
how much the UN is spending in Haiti. It is very hard because
all the accounting systems are different. This has already gone
through and been approved. This will be a revolution in just harmonising
systems so that you can compare programmes across the board. That
is a big victory. It was approved by the General Assembly. It
is moving ahead. It was endorsed by Shaukat Aziz and the President
of Tanzania and Louisa Diogo that to at least get these systems
harmonised. I would just say for WFP that I am very proud that
we are often at the leading edge of looking at the kinds of systems
that will allow for coherence across the board. We will be the
first UN agency to adopt international accounting standards of
IPSAS.[11]
This is a huge effort, especially for an agency which has 7% of
its overhead on all of these matters, but harmonising systems,
getting everyone on the same page, and being assured that when
we are faced with a crisis we are not all running off in our own
directions but pulling together is a big step—but no doubt
not all the steps that need to happen.
Q31 Chairman: The whole issue of UN co-ordination
is something we never get very far away from when looking at these
kinds of international crises. Thank you for the evidence that
you have given us. We are hoping to visit your headquarters in
Rome as part of this inquiry. There is no doubt at all that the
WFP does deliver vital supplies to people who would otherwise
simply die if you did not make it. You have already indicated
to us that many of the people who are involved in that are risking,
and in some sad cases losing their lives and I think we should
record that. Never mind the politics and the admin, those facts
should be fully recognised, that people are prepared to put their
own lives on the line to ensure that other people do not die.
That has to be something that the world should acknowledge and
appreciate. Clearly, if this existing food crisis is to persist,
as the indicators suggest it may, your organisation is going to
be crucial but we also have to have longer-term solutions, as
Hugh Bayley said, and effective co-ordination. I actually think
I need to say you were on Kofi Annan's High-level Panel. We all
have a lot of frustration with the UN, but it does not mean it
never works. It clearly does work in many areas. Thank you very
much indeed for giving your evidence. We have overrun on time
but, given that this is a report into the World Food Programme,
it was important that we had the opportunity to explore all these
issues with you.
Ms Sheeran: Thank you so much
and I am very pleased that the Prime Minister has pulled together
much of the world today also to discuss coherent responses with
us. That kind of leadership is critical. Thank you also for the
support you have given to looking at coherence in the UN system.
I know this Committee has been a leading voice and advocate of
solutions that can drive not only efficiency but effectiveness.
So thank you.
5 UN Food and Agriculture Organisation Back
6
UN International Fund for Agriculture Development Back
7
UN Development Programme Back
8
International Monetary Fund Back
9
Ev 61 Back
10
UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs Back
11
International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board Back
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