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	Sustainability Pathways by Food & Agricultural Organization (FAO)   Sustainability means ensuring human rights and well-being without depleting or diminishing the capacity of the earth''s ecosystems to support life, or at the expense of others well-being.   It is a multi-dimensional concept encompassing environmental integrity, social well-being, economic resilience and good governance: each of these sustainability dimensions involves several issues and all dimensions need to be considered. Sustainability is an ambitious objective that can be reached through different pathways.   Out of the 2.5 billion people in poor countries living directly from the food and agriculture sector, 1.5 billion people live in smallholder households. Smallholders provide up to 80 percent of the food supply in Asian and sub-Saharan Africa.   They contribute to diversified landscape and through their everyday activities, generate income and rural livelihoods through food and non-food production.   They manage land, water and biodiversity resources and through their practices, affect ecosystem services, such as water flows and purification, pollination, pest and disease regulation and carbon and other materials flow.   From the subsistence, market-marginalized Pacific farmers, to the half million successful commercial organic exporters in Africa, smallholders’ viability rely on farming with nature. Rather than working against Nature by fighting individual problems after they have occurred, smallholders tend to prevent problems by implementing practices referred to as agroecological, organic or regenerative.   Their systems are based on diversification and associations of plants and animals, including agroforestry, crop-livestock and rice-fish systems. Smallholder’ practices are not based on agronomic and technological fixes, but rather on promoting ecological processes that boost food production.   They observe and act upon inter-dependency between what is being produced, the soil that nurtures all beings and associated biodiversity. The approach taken integrates approaches and knowledge pertaining to the social and natural spheres, as the agro-ecosystem is viewed as a socio-ecological unit, or an organism.   Traditional farming, pastoralism, artisanal fishing and community forestry have empirically demonstrated their potential to reach sustainability. This is because smallness has an inherent adaptive capacity to economic, environmental and societal changes. If supported, or at least not hindered in their constant efforts, smallholders hold the promise to achieve the dual goal of food security and the conservation of the global good that underlies our existence.   Small is not always beautiful but smallness can become rewarding with self-reliance for sustenance and generational responsibility. Smallholders ecology pursue this path.   http://www.fao.org/nr/sustainability/home/en/ Visit the related web page
	Taking stock of two decades of economic and social rights advocacy by Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR)   More than twenty years since their re-emergence on the international agenda, are economic, social and cultural rights still a rhetorical aspiration or have there been real advances in how they are enjoyed, claimed and enforced?   This and other pressing questions regarding the current state of economic, social and cultural rights (ESC rights) are addressed in a new publication, Twenty Years of Economic and Social Rights Advocacy.   The paper takes stock of the progress made in recognizing, defending and realizing these rights over the past two decades. It distills the outcomes of a series of events the Center for Economic and Social Rights organized in 2013 and 2014 which brought together human rights activists and practitioners from across the globe to critically reflect on trends and developments in the economic and social rights field.   The 72 page document includes contributions from leading figures from the human rights and development communities, as well as from the indigenous and women''s movements.   It is structured along three thematic threads which are of particular significance for economic and social rights. Human rights in the 21st century global economy, examines advances in applying human rights standards in the sphere of economic, development and environmental policy. Inequality as injustice looks at the evolution of equality struggles, including greater attention to different forms of discrimination and inequality (including economic inequality), as well as new understandings of substantive equality.   Towards implementation: monitoring and enforcement examines progress and challenges in claiming economic and social rights and seeking justice for violations through the courts and other accountability mechanisms.   The contributors highlight the progress that has been made on each front, particularly in the realm of normative development, legal protection and judicial enforcement. But the publication also highlights how the economic and social rights of millions of people across the globe are under systematic and renewed attack as a result of a number of pervasive trends.   These include the imposition of regressive fiscal austerity measures and other policies fuelling economic inequality, the failure to take effective action against climate change, and the consolidated grip that unbridled corporate power now has on both national and international governance.   “In keeping with the pioneering role it has played for more than 20 years, the Center for Economic and Social Rights offers this timely and forward-looking reflection on the progress made in realizing economic and social rights, said Mary Robinson, UN Special Envoy on Climate Change. http://www.cesr.org/article.php?id=1760   Defending Dignity: A manual for National Human Rights Institutions on economic and social rights monitoring   The Asia-Pacific is home to more of the world’s poor than any other region. Some 1.8 billion people face daily deprivations, including lack of food, the risk of disease, hazardous work and precarious living conditions.   For this reason, National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) in this part of the world are redoubling their efforts to ensure their governments comply with their economic, social and cultural rights obligations, and with the recently adopted Sustainable Development Goals that reinforce these.   To support them in this effort, the Asia Pacific Forum (APF) and the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) have released a new manual designed to strengthen their role in monitoring and enforcing these rights.   Defending Dignity looks at the opportunities and challenges for monitoring human rights in a development context and sets out governments responsibilities to create conditions in which people can enjoy their economic, social and cultural (ESC) rights. It guides readers through CESR’s framework to enable human rights defenders to produce compelling evidence when governments fail to meet their human rights responsibilities.   The manual is designed to be used by a wide variety of actors, from grassroots civil society groups to government policy-makers, Defending Dignity focuses in particular on how NHRIs can use it to best effect to fulfil their monitoring, reporting and adjudication functions in the comparatively neglected area of ESC rights. It explains how these institutions can define the issues to address, collect and analyze the necessary data, make a rigorous assessment of the resource issues at stake and then deliver their findings in the most impactful way.   http://www.cesr.org/article.php?id=1772 Visit the related web page
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