capacity development

This 2014–2015 Global Food Policy Report is the fourth in an annual series that provides a comprehensive overview of major food policy developments and events. In this report, distinguished researchers, policymakers, and practitioners review what happened in food policy in 2014 at the global, regional, and national levels, and—supported by the latest knowledge and research—explain why.

This report focuses on areas with highest potential efficiency gains to increase the value for money from investments in core public goods and services such as extension, irrigation and rural roads. This is a first attempt to carry out such an analysis in Cambodia, and even in the Greater Mekong sub-region.

Rural people in Nepal and other developing nations are part of complex, social-ecological systems. Efforts to provide assistance to these people must integrate knowledge from a variety of perspectives. This report documents the use of a role-playing game, supported by an agent-based model, to demonstrate the interaction between migration, social capital and the effectiveness of water storage.

Water cooperation has received prominent focus in the post-2015 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). While proposals for measuring water cooperation appear to be converging toward a small set of indicators, the degree to which these proposed indicators draw on past work is unclear.

In addition to global developments and food policy changes, 2014 also saw important developments with potentially wide repercussions in individual countries and regions. This chapter offers perspectives on major food policy developments in various regions including Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, Central Asia, South Asia, East Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean.