Designing Global Governance for Agricultural Development and Food and Nutrition Security

• Author: Joachim Braun,Regina Birner
• Date: 01 May 2017
• Published date: 01 May 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/rode.12261

Designing Global Governance for Agricultural

Development and Food and Nutrition Security

Joachim von Braun and Regina Birner*

Abstract

We point to def‌icits in current global institutional arrangements in support of agricultural development

and food and nutrition security. A framework for global institutional arrangements proposed here is the

set of essential international public goods for a well-functioning world food system. These public goods

include international natural resource management; trade and transboundary competition policy; research

and innovation; handling large scale food emergencies; and transboundary food safety. Based on the

framework, and institutional economics considerations, causes of current malfunctioning of global food

governance are analyzed. It is proposed to redesign global food governance by establishing an

international platform with policy clusters mapped along the set of global public goods. To support the

platform with needed research-based evidence an International Panel on Food, Nutrition and Agriculture

(IPFNA) is suggested, partly following the design of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

(IPCC). Existing organizations and mechanisms would form building blocks of the strengthened and

redesigned governance system. A gradual approach toward redesign is proposed. Some redesign in the

suggested direction was triggered by the food crisis of 2008, as demonstrated by the reform of the

Committee on Food Security (CFS) with its high level panel of experts, but more is needed.

1. Introduction

The world food and agricultural system and the governance of its international

dimensions show signs of serious malfunctioning. The incoherent and inadequate

response to the acute food price crisis in 2008 was just one indication. The

preparedness has somewhat improved thereafter by establishing some new

organizational mechanisms and coordination. Yet, the world remains ill prepared

for managing the major challenges facing the global agricultural and food system,

and the nutrition def‌iciencies in the 21st century (von Braun et al., 2014).

Globalization of agriculture and its dynamics and complexities have outpaced the

capabilities of the organizations that have evolved over time to deal with the global

dimensions of agricultural and food systems change (Paarlberg, 2002). We just hint

at the list of major challenges: (i) low agricultural productivity growth caused by

insuff‌icient investment in research and development (R&D); (ii) insuff‌icient

response to the risks of climate change for food security; (iii) loss in forest areas

combined with loss of biodiversity; (iv) in global food markets appropriate

international institutions that assure competition are lacking; (v) lack of agreement

about trade leaves restrictions in place that fostered price volatility; (vi) a new

driver of change around agriculture and food is the rise of a bioeconomy, i.e. the

growing production and transformation of biologically based materials for many

uses. A related insight is that agriculture and food policy cannot be managed in

*von Braun (Corresponding author): Department of Economic and Technological Change, Center for

Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn, Germany. E-mail: jvonbraun@uni-bonn.de. Birner:

Institute of Agricultural Economics and Social Sciences in the Tropics and Subtropics, University of

Hohenheim, Germany.

The copyright line for this article was changed on 09 February 2017 after original online publication.

Review of Development Economics, 21(2), 265–284, 2017

DOI:10.1111/rode.12261

©2016 UNU-WIDER. Review of Development Economics Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License, which permits use

and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and the content is offered under

identical terms.

isolation from water and energy, a nexus perspective is needed. The transboundary

pandemic diseases linked to livestock production remain a global risk. Large scale

food emergencies as a result of weather or wars are reacted to rather than

prevented. A global nutrition policy is lacking despite global proportions of

undernutrition and obesity. While it might be a stimulating intellectual exercise to

try to identify a comprehensive new governance system for international policy

action in agriculture and food security, it would also be na€

ıve to expect any fast

institutional and organizational change from within existing organizations in view of

forces of resilience of inherited institutional arrangements.

The share of off‌icial development assistance (ODA, bilateral and multilateral) for

agriculture, forestry and f‌isheries in total aid had declined from 19% in 1985/87 to

6% before the food price crisis in 2008 (Islam, 2011). The underlying cause was a

lack of global attention to agriculture in the 1980s and 1990s, as the world had

become complacent, following the Green Revolution that agricultural growth would

just continue without the need of major public investments.

Besley and Ghatak (2003) noted already in 2003 a surprisingly low level of

attention in the mainstream development economics literature to the provision of

public goods and services for poverty reduction, and not much has changed since

then (Birner and von Braun, 2015). The literature that deals with this question at

the global level, focusing on the agricultural and food system, is even more limited.

Some studies analyze individual global organizations in this f‌ield or the group of

the food and agriculture related organizations (Lele, 2015). Most of the global

organizations, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the

Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and the

International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), have been subject to

evaluations that have identif‌ied challenges in their internal governance (FAO, 2007;

IFAD, 2005; CGIAR, 2008). These evaluations have been responded to by the

organizations with reform initiatives but the processes of reform are slow. Most

importantly, these individual reviews could not comprehensively address the

question of how the entire global food system might work best as a whole.

Other studies focus on selected aspects of the global agricultural and food system

governance. Shaw (2007) provides an account of global attempts to ensure global food

security. McKeon (2015) analyzes the evolution of paradigms regarding food security

and agriculture in the global debate and in an earlier book, McKeon (2009) discussed

the role of civil society organizations in the global governance of food and agriculture.

There are also books that critically examine the role of private companies in global

food governance (e.g. Higgins and Lawrence, 2007; Oosterveer, 2007). Margulis

(2013) applied the concept of “regime complexity” and identif‌ied diverging rules and

norms as sources of conf‌lict and fragmentation in ongoing efforts to strengthen the

global governance of food security. The World Development Report 2008 provides an

assessment of global agricultural governance, taking into account the different types

of global organizations as well as the challenges of coordination among them (World

Bank, 2007). Candel (2014, p. 592) conducted a review of the literature on food

security governance and found that the literature on global food security governance

is dominated by the critique “that there is no truly authoritative and encompassing

body or institution with a mandate to address food security concerns across sectors

and levels.” A step to address this problem can be seen in the reform of the

Committee on Food Security in 2009 (CFS, 2009).

Against this background, the paper aims to (1) develop a conceptual framework

to analyze global governance of the agricultural and food system, (2) to apply this

266 Joachim von Braun and Regina Birner

©2016 UNU-WIDER. Review of Development Economics Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.