The 9th Meeting of the IPPC Capacity Development Committee CDC) held in Rome

The 9th meeting of the IPPC Capacity Development Committee (CDC) took place from 5-9th of December 2016 in Rome, Italy. The Meeting was chaired by Ms Sally Jennings, the CDC Chair, and opened by Mr Jingyuan Xia, the IPPC Secretary. The meeting was attended by six CDC members from six of the seven FAO regions, a representative from the CPM Bureau RPPOs, observers from the Standard and Trade Development Facility (STDF) and from the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation (IICA), and for the first time, a representative from RPPOs.

The meeting kicked off with updates from several IPPC bodies including the IPPC Secretariat, the CPM Bureau, each CDC member and observers. Key areas of discussion for this session included the status of IPPC Phytosanitary Resources, further advances in projects related to the Phytosanitary Capacity Evaluation, current and future capacity development activities and a number of strategic issues pertinent to the CDC. The CDC agreed to several specific actions towards enhancing the content and visibility of the technical resources available on the Phytosanitary Resources page as well as the provision of inputs towards the redesign and reorganization of the page, in particular to include information on the implementation pilot on surveillance.

Advances in the STDF 401 Project Training of Phytosanitary Capacity Evaluation (PCE) Evaluators were discussed and it was concluded that the first phase of the project would be synthesized in the form of a video to communicate the results of the project thus far. The Secretariat agreed to investigate possibilities to keep the PCE trainees linked through an online platform.

With regard to current capacity development activities the CDC agreed to support outreach actions towards the Pilot Programme on Surveillance. The CDC also brainstormed several possible topics for future IPPC regional workshops and agreed upon future steps towards further fine-tuning of workshops based on feedback from the 2016 IPPC Regional Workshops.

The CDC discussed future Capacity Development activities including the role of RPPOs in Capacity Development, advances with the STDF ePhyto project, South-South Cooperation with China, and project proposals related to the development of an online IPPC Phytosanitary treatment search tool and a Beyond Compliance tool aimed at improving phytosanitary systems through a systems approach. The CDC welcomed both proposals and endorsed the Beyond Compliance tool for IPPC implementation.

The report of the 9th CDC Meeting is available here. More information regarding ongoing IPPC capacity development activities and phytosanitary resources can be found on the Phytosanitary Resources page.