Strategic Planning Group meets in extra-ordinary session to advance IPPC strategic work

Rome, 10 November 2020. The Strategic Planning Group (SPG) held its extraordinary sessions to finalise the discussion on several important items that required the IPPC think tank’s attention. The SPG held a thorough discussion about its role, noting that its recent sessions had an increasing strategic focus. The SPG members agreed that the time had come to review its Terms of Reference (ToRs) by ensuring that its future sessions will maintain said focus, avoiding topics and discussions that are not in line with the SPG core mission.

The SPG discussed several possibilities for the revision of its functioning, which will be presented to the next CPM session in 2021. The objective is to continue providing broader views for the IPPC community, which have already resulted in extremely positive outcomes, such as the International Year of Plant Health and a more effective resource mobilisation policy, which is now coming to an end. The SPG agreed to use the expiring resource mobilisation strategy as a basis to propose a new one, which the CPM will review and adopt once presented.

The SPG discussed the implementation plan for the IPPC Strategic Framework 2020 – 2030 and its development agenda, highlighting the need to ensure that available resource must continue to finance the core activities of the IPPC, namely standard setting, implementation and communication. The eight development agenda items should continue to be implemented upon completion of the one for which there is a considerable amount of work delivered already, such as the commodity standards, pest outbreak and alert systems, e-commerce, ePhyto and amongst others. New resources should be sought and made available for other development agenda items that are at early stages of implementation, such as the study on climate change impacts on plant health. This approach should facilitate a rapid and effective implementation once another development agenda item is completed or new funds are available.

The report of the SPG extra-ordinary session will be available at the following link:

https://www.ippc.int/en/core-activities/governance/strategic-planning-group/