End hunger and make the transition to sustainable agricultural food systems by Rio+20 Portal - The Peoples Summit 7:39am 3rd Jun, 2012   End hunger and make the transition to sustainable agricultural & food systems. (FAO)    Improving agricultural and food systems is essential for a world with healthier people and healthier ecosystems. Healthy and productive lives cannot be achieved unless “all people at all times have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food which meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (FAO, 1996).    Healthy ecosystems must be resilient and productive, and provide the goods and services needed to meet current societal needs and desires without jeopardizing the options for future generations to benefit from the full range of goods and services provided by terrestrial, aquatic and marine ecosystems.    There are very strong linkages between the conditions to achieve universal food security and nutrition, responsible environmental stewardship and greater fairness in food management. They intersect in agricultural and food systems at the global, national and local levels. To emphasize these links, FAO has three main messages for the Rio+20 summit:    1. The Rio vision of sustainable development cannot be realized unless hunger and malnutrition are eradicated.    2. The Rio vision requires that both food consumption and production systems achieve more with less.    3. The transition to a sustainable future requires fundamental changes in the governance of food and agriculture and an equitable distribution of the transition costs and benefits.    FAO believes that the Rio vision will remain unfulfilled as long as hunger and malnutrition persist. The sustainable management of agriculture and food systems is key to a sustainable future. Sound policies are needed to create the incentives and capacities for sustainable consumption and production and to enable consumers and producers to make sustainable choices.    National governments and other stakeholders need to:    1. Establish and protect rights to resources, especially for the most vulnerable;    2. Incorporate incentives for sustainable consumption and production into food systems;    3. Promote fair and well-functioning agricultural and food markets;    4. Reduce risk and increase the resilience of the most vulnerable; and 5. Invest public resources in essential public goods, including innovation and infrastructure.    To achieve the future we want – a world without hunger and with sustainable development – FAO calls on the Rio+20 participants to make the following six commitments:    1. Accelerate the pace of reducing hunger and malnutrition with a view to eradicating these in the near future.    2. Use the Voluntary Guidelines to Support the Progressive Realization of the Right to Adequate Food in the Context of National Food Security and the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security as the overarching frameworks for achieving food security and equitable sustainable development.    3. Support the efforts of all stakeholders working in food and agriculture, especially in developing and least-developed countries, to implement technical and policy approaches to agricultural development that integrate food security and environmental objectives.    4. Ensure an equitable distribution of costs and benefits from the transition to sustainable agricultural consumption and production, and that people’s livelihoods and access to resources are protected.    5. Adopt integrated approaches to managing multiple objectives and linking financing sources for achieving sustainable agricultural and food systems.    6. Implement governance reforms based on the principles of transparency, participation and accountability to ensure policies are carried out and commitments are fulfilled. The Committee on World Food Security can serve as a model for these reforms.    Asia Pacific Rio+20 declaration - Asia-Pacific Research Network    We, civil society representatives from around Asia Pacific gathered in Hanoi twenty years after the first Earth Summit in 1992 fully aware that the world is farther than ever from reaching the goals of sustainable development.    Our world today is locked in environmental, social, political, economic, and environmental crises. Resource depletion and biodiversity loss continue at very rapid rates. Air and water pollution from agro-chemical and industrial processes continue to cause serious economic, social, and health problems. Greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, causing dangerous climate change.    Rio+20 should learn from the failure of the prevailing system of development multiple crises that our planet finds itself in. We know this system to be one where economic and natural resources are used to accumulate wealth for the few who control them rather than serve the common good of society; a system based on the unrestricted exploitation of the poor, women and the environment for corporate profits; a system where a few powerful countries write the rules of global trade, finance, and environmental action in the interest of their corporations and banks, harming the environment and peoples in the South. We know it to be a failed system from which we need to break. We need system change.    Reclaiming Rights at Rio: CSO Consultation to the African Agenda in the Rio+20 Summit    We, representatives of organizations from more than 15 countries in Africa comprised of small farmers, youth groups, fisherfolk, indigenous peoples, women, labour, environmentalists, faith-based organizations, local authorities and NGOs from African Civil Society met from May 30 to 31, 2012 for a CSO Consultation to the African Agenda in the Rio+20 Summit in Nairobi, Kenya.    This year marks two decades since the Earth Summit declaration which recognized the need to change the unequal and unsustainable character of dominant development patterns and set down commonly accepted principles of sustainable development grounded on human rights, and a long-term action plan (Agenda 21) that was to be implemented by multilateral bodies, states and non-state entities at the global, national, and local levels.    We are aware that 20 years hence, the world is nowhere near its acclaimed goals of achieving sustainable development. The multiple crises on finance, food, climate and energy and failure in governance have resulted in further misery and poverty to the world’s peoples as a dominant few countries and people continue to control and own global resources to suit profit and corporate-driven interests.    Over half of total global income are owned by the 10% of the world’s richest people, even as 2.5 billion people in the South live on less than $2 a day. People in wealthy countries with unsustainable development consumption patterns consume as much as ten times more natural resources as those in poorer countries, while in the South, 1 billion are hungry, 1.6 billion have no access to electricity, and almost 800 millions have no access to clean water and 2.5 billion people remain without improved sanitation.    Resource depletion and biodiversity loss continue at very rapid rates. Air and water pollution from agro-chemical and industrial processes, including mining and other extractive industries continue to cause serious economic, social, and health problems. Greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, threatening dangerous climate change.    Worst affected are the poor in the South, especially here in Africa, who did little in causing them.    Even as African economies struggled to recover from the 2008 financial crisis as commodity prices rose and export revenues returned to pre-crisis levels, the continent’s growth in 2011 fell from 4.6 per cent in 2010 to 2.7 per cent. Africa lags behind on most of Millennium Development Goal Indicators. Unemployment, particularly among youth, remain high, while income inequalities have widened.    * Access many more proposals, views and perspectives from Rio+20 Portal - The Peoples Summit, via the link below. Visit the related web page
	Next (more recent) news item
	Next (older) news item