Corporate report

FCDO response to the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) recommendations on UK aid to agriculture in a time of climate change

Published 16 August 2023

This was published under the 2022 to 2024 Sunak Conservative government

Opening statement

The Government welcomes the Independent Commission for Aid Impact’s (ICAI) review of UK aid to agriculture in a time of climate change. The full review of “how well the UK is using its aid funding and influence to support agriculture policies and programming in a time of climate change” focuses on the period 2016 to 2021. The review recognises that the UK’s approach has been mainly relevant and has made effective contributions to poverty reduction. It cites many examples of effective interventions, and good practice on citizen engagement.

We accept all of ICAI’s recommendations. We welcome ICAI’s recognition of the positive impacts of UK aid to agriculture, achieved through our delivery programmes, research and investments, and ICAI’s view that international partners value UK thought leadership. We note there have been significant changes to the UK aid programme in recent years, including the merger of the Department for International Development (DFID) and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to form the FCDO, the impact of the pandemic, and government policy changes on the resources available for development. We note ICAI’s assessment of the challenges to the UK’s international leadership and the need to reinvigorate it.

We welcome that ICAI finds the FCDO’s Agriculture Conceptual Framework of 2015 to have provided strategic clarity to the UK’s agricultural development work. In 2022, we published the UK’s International Development Strategy (IDS) in which sustainable and inclusive agriculture and food systems are emphasized as a key priority, on which we are deploying the full heft of our diplomatic, policy and programme toolbox. The UK’s Integrated Review Refresh (IRR), published this year, reconfirms our commitment to tackling climate change, environmental damage and biodiversity loss, and to implementing a campaign to improve global food security and nutrition, aiming to accelerate evidence-based progress across relevant themes. These issues will be at the heart of our work on sustainable agriculture and food systems.

We agree with ICAI’s view that the FCDO should ensure coherence of our programmes. We have made structural, coordination and other changes to enhance our focus on global food security and climate-sensitive agriculture, and we are rebuilding our expertise. We will seize opportunities for implementing a more joined-up approach to agriculture in a time of climate change. The campaign on food security and nutrition will include a major event in the UK in November and include a focus on climate-resilient and sustainable agriculture. We will use this to focus international attention on these issues, to share best practice and to galvanise more effective and coherent work on relevant policies, research and programming.

Our response to the recommendations stated in the ICAI report is below.

Response to recommendations

Recommendation 1

The government should ensure that all agriculture programmes and investments have an integral focus on climate change and nature.

Accept

The UK Government made a public commitment in the May 2022 International Development Strategy to “ensure that all new bilateral UK Official Development Assistance (ODA) aligns with the Paris Agreement in 2023” and to “ensure all new UK bilateral aid spending does no harm to nature by taking steps to ensure UK bilateral ODA becomes ‘nature positive’”.

This is embedded in our Programme Operating Framework (‘PrOF Rule 5’) and in PrOF guidance, including on climate and environment risk assurance. These will be used to guide future programming, with some exemptions for urgent life-saving humanitarian relief operations. They are complemented by more detailed technical guidance and facilities to enable staff designing programmes to access world class technical expertise on climate and nature.

Recommendation 2

All commercial agriculture programmes and investments should be monitored for nutritional outcomes.

Accept

In line with the commitments FCDO made at the 2021 Nutrition for Growth Summit, since August 2022, all programmes spending ODA must assess whether they intend to help improve nutrition outcomes and must be scored against the OECD-DAC Nutrition Policy Marker (NPM). Not all programmes are relevant to nutrition, and these would therefore receive an NPM score of 0.

The picture is more mixed on commercial agriculture. Some commercial agriculture projects may not have nutritional outcomes (e.g. those focused on market enabling infrastructure or non-food crops such as cotton or sisal). All new and existing commercial agriculture programmes that contribute to nutrition objectives - i.e. those with NPM score 1 [Significant] or 2 [Principal] - will monitor nutrition outcomes. The FCDO Nutrition Policy Team will offer advice to those commercial agriculture programmes with NPM scores 1 and 2 on how to do this effectively. FCDO will also monitor the number of commercial agriculture programmes using nutrition related indicators to assess the uptake of active nutrition monitoring in this sector.

We will use the programming guidance highlighted in our response to recommendation 3 below to inform the design of commercial agriculture investments, so that they maximise their contributions to positive impact on nutrition alongside climate, nature and economic outcomes, and avoid doing harm.

Recommendation 3

The government should act to secure the UK’s influence and thought leadership on agriculture.

Accept

The Government is taking several steps to reinvigorate the UK’s influence and thought leadership on agriculture. We will strengthen coherence in ODA policy and programming through programming guidance that recognises the importance of food and agriculture for our climate and nature, food security and nutrition, and poverty reduction and economic growth goals. Our diplomatic and policy work will be informed by the best evidence available and focus on critical levers for transformative change.

We will continue to invest in high-quality research and evidence, to tackle global food and climate challenges. FCDO is developing additional internal mechanisms to facilitate the use of agriculture and food research, evidence, and technical expertise. These will complement existing internal centres of expertise, including inclusive and green growth, climate change and nature, and will maximise use of UK technical expertise as well as its research, science and technology investments to drive sustainable agriculture.

FCDO will also undertake an external recruitment exercise to rebuild technical food and agriculture capability and respond to rising demand for technical expertise in the context of the food security, climate, biodiversity, and geopolitical developments on food and food security.

We have recently established a new department on Global Food Security, Agriculture and Land Governance (GFAL) within the Humanitarian, Migration and Food Security Directorate in FCDO to improve coherence and effectiveness, to deliver the Food Security and Nutrition Campaign referred to above, and to lead the delivery of the high-level Food Security and Nutrition event in late 2023.

FCDO will also continue to play a leading role in global policy and programming fora on food and agriculture (eg Global Donor Platform on Agriculture and Rural Development, relevant G7/G20 development working groups, GAFSP, CGIAR, Agriculture Breakthrough), and other relevant initiatives.

Recommendation 4

FCDO, BII and AgDevCo should look for operational synergies and complementarities between programmes and investments to maximise effectiveness, building on their comparative advantages.

Accept

AgDevCo and BII regularly share market information and coordinate their investment activity, with AgDevCo typically focussed on smaller, earlier stage, investment opportunities than BII. Collaboration has increased further following BII’s US$50mn equity investment into AgDevCo in 2022, building on interactions between FCDO, BII and AgDevCo over recent years. BII nominates a non-executive director to the board of AgDevCo. BII also sits directly on the board as an observer and participates in several of AgDevCo’s management committees. These links facilitate good information flow between the organisations and help drive complementarities.

Following the capital increase by BII, AgDevCo has committed to further investment into the Afrique Phyto Plus (A2P) group, supporting the expansion of A2P’s distribution capacity in Côte d’Ivoire and across West Africa and its entry into new markets in the Sahel and Central Africa regions.

FCDO and BII are also joint funders of AgDevCo’s integrated technical assistance facility, the management of which will further drive collaboration across BII activities and FCDO programmes.

FCDO staff across a range of advisory cadres including in regional departments and overseas posts, will proactively look for opportunities for operational synergies between the programmes they run and BII and AgDevCo.

Recommendation 5

DSIT and UKRI should integrate learning about development effectiveness, including from previous ICAI reviews, into future ODA-funded agricultural research.

Accept

DSIT and UKRI have committed to building these and previous ICAI findings into their future ODA programming. DSIT, UKRI, FCDO and other ODA R&D spending departments continue to work together to share lessons and build relevance and effectiveness of their agricultural research portfolio for development objectives, through the Gilbert Initiative to build climate-resilient food systems through research and innovation.

UKRI supports the need for greater coordination of agricultural research for development (AR4D). A key means through which to achieve this will be the Gilbert Initiative. UKRI will be an active participant in this initiative, to ensure new AR4D programmes are coherent with ongoing activity and are able to leverage developments in the wider UK agricultural research and innovation system.

UKRI is committed to working through equitable partnerships, to ensure the research and innovation programmes we fund are mutually beneficial to all partners. Future ODA programmes will build on the progress that UKRI has made through measures like the Equitable Partnerships Resource Hub and International Development Peer Review College with, for example, greater consideration given to Research Capacity Strengthening, where overall conditions allow. UKRI will continue to work closely with other UK research for development funders to develop and propagate best practice.