View previous stories
	Ensuring access to water for agriculture vital for sustainable future by José Graziano Director-General, Food & Agricultural Organisation   March 2012   Ensuring universal access to water and using it wisely in agriculture is essential to end famine, drought and political instability, United Nations officials stressed today, adding that countries must strive to provide this vital source to all their citizens to achieve a sustainable future.   “Over the coming decades, feeding a growing global population and ensuring food and nutrition security for all will depend on increasing food production. This, in turn, means ensuring the sustainable use of our most critical finite source – water,” said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in his message marking World Water Day.   The theme of this year’s observance is water and food security. Currently, at least one billion people suffer from hunger and over 800 million still lack a safe supply of freshwater.   Mr. Ban emphasized that guaranteeing food and water for all will require countries’ full engagement.   “It will require policies that promote water rights for all, stronger regulatory capacity and gender equality,” Mr. Ban said.   “Investments in water infrastructure, rural development and water resource management will be essential.”   A Senior Technical Adviser for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Rudolph Cleveringa, echoed Mr. Ban’s remarks, stressing that securing water access is particularly important in rural communities.   “For smallholder farmers in developing countries, water and land cannot be treated as separate issues. If we are to reduce poverty in rural areas, we must develop a holistic approach to focus on water in all of its contributions to development such as in areas of health and agriculture,” he said.   According to IFAD, approximately 70 per cent of the world’s water resources are used for agriculture and by 2025 two-thirds of the population could struggle to get access to this resource.   UN water and sanitation expert, Catarina de Albuquerque, urged countries to address the right to water during the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) taking place in Rio de Janeiro in June, in which world leaders as well as members from the private sector and civil society will come together to discuss ways to encourage green economies and eradicate poverty.   In particular, Ms. Albuquerque called for all countries to recognize the right to water and sanitation for all, stressing that countries cannot go back on their decision to support this right.   “Some States, including Canada and the United Kingdom, are apparently proposing the removal of an explicit reference to the right to water and sanitation for all from the first draft of the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development outcome document,” Ms. Albuquerque warned.   “We should be marking World Water Day with progress, not debating semantics and certainly not back-tracking on these issues.”   FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said: "Twenty years ago, the first Rio Earth Summit highlighted the vital importance of sound water management in building a sustainable, food-secure future for the planet. While many countries have made progress in improving their management of water resources, much more needs to be done.   "We must meet the agricultural demand in a way that conserves water and other natural resources, ranging from the sustainable intensification of agriculture capable of producing the food the world needs while using water more intelligently to changing the way we eat, reducing losses, waste and promoting healthier diets,," he added.   Doing so will require investments in people, infrastructure, education and awareness building, and finding incentives for small farmers to adopt best practices and strengthening their capacity to improve their productivity, said Graziano da Silva.   Boosting farmers resilience against climate change, improving water governance, and establishing institutions to improve national and regional water management are also priority areas, he said.   Today some 1.6 billion people live in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity and by 2025 two-thirds of the world"s population could be living under water stressed conditions.   One primary reason for this is the use of water for food production. The average human drinks 2 to 4 litres of water every day, but it takes 2 000 to 5 000 litres of water to produce one person"s daily food. Agriculture is responsible for 70 percent of all freshwater and groundwater withdrawals worldwide.   January 2012   Farming "key to environmental challenge".(AFP)   Agriculture is part of the solution to the world"s environmental challenge and must play a key role at next June"s Rio summit on sustainable development, the head of the UN food agency says.   "Agriculture ministers from the entire world must be present at the Rio+20 meeting (in June) so that agriculture commits itself to helping clean up the planet," Jose Graziano da Silva, the new boss of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said.   "Agriculture contributes 30 per cent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming and we must raise the awareness of our farmers," he added during an event organized by local authorities ahead of the opening of the World Social Forum (WSF).   The Rio+20 summit next June, the fourth major summit on sustainable development since 1972, will call on world leaders to commit themselves to creating a social and "green economy," with priority being given to eradicating hunger.   The WSF, brings together social and community sector non-government organizations to debate solutions to the global economic crisis.   "Agriculture is not just part of the problem, it is also part of the solution to the environment issue. It can contribute a lot to the planet"s sustainable development, by finding techniques less harmful to the environment, by helping with clean energy and with a better redistribution of production," Graziano said.   Graziano is a former Brazilian food security minister and the first Latin American to head FAO, a UN agency which battles hunger affecting over a billion people globally.   He is internationally acclaimed for his role in designing and implementing Brazil"s "Zero Hunger" ("Fome Zero") program, which helped lift 24 million people out of extreme poverty.   In his address, the 61-year-old professor, who was elected last June and took up his post early this month, pledged to open FAO doors to civil society.   "FAO must open its doors to society. We are trying to create space for dialogue with society to break the monopoly of dialogue with governments, with some specific governments, as occurred over the past few years," Graziano noted.   Stressing that social movements were seeking reality, not utopia, he added: "Utopia is to think that solution exists on the margins of society, that there can be sustainable development without food security, that we can live in peace with nearly one billion of starving people in the world."   He criticized what he called the "roulette" of world commodities prices.   He said farm production would need to grow five times bigger and pointed out that 90 per cent of this increase could be achieved with better productivity and not at the expense of the environment.   And Graziano urged Brazil, now the world"s sixth largest economy, to "assume its international responsibility" in the fight against world hunger "with a new form of international cooperation" that respects developing countries. Visit the related web page
	Unfinished Progress–Food Systems in Emerging Countries by Olivier De Schutter UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food   March 2012   “The food systems of emerging countries are at a major crossroads. Millions of people have been lifted out of poverty, yet whole communities have been left behind,” warned Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food, after presenting his reports* on China, Mexico and South Africa to the Human Rights Council.   “As many as 19 million Mexicans and 12 million South Africans remain food insecure, and China’s rural dwellers are up to six times poorer than urban populations,” the expert said, calling on emerging countries to act now to lay the foundations for fair and sustainable food systems.   Mr. De Schutter urged emerging economies to protect the rights of land users, especially minority and vulnerable groups, and to establish in law the right to food, so it can be rapidly translated it into national strategies and institutions.   He also advised supporting smallholder agriculture in the face of mega-development projects, and stopping soil and water degradation through a massive shift to agro ecological practices.   “Several emerging countries have been pioneers in putting the right to food into law,” the Special Rapporteur said. Mexico recently amended its constitution to recognize the right to food and South Africa included the right in its post-apartheid constitution in 1996.   “Legal recognition of the right to food and multi-year strategies that hold authorities accountable are the only way to ensure policy coherence over time and thus lasting success,” Mr. De Schutter noted. He also highlighted the effectiveness of multi-year national framework laws on the right to food, pointing to the example of Brazil, which he visited in 2009.   Regarding food security challenges and the policies adopted by emerging countries to tackle them, the United Nations expert noted that “China has achieved 95 per cent grain self-sufficiency by encouraging individual households to produce, while allowing village-level organizations to provide certain collective services.”   “South Africa is shifting from merely redistributing land to more comprehensive rural development policies,” he added, “and Mexico’s ambitious Oportunidades programme is providing targeted cash transfers and nutritional support to more than 50 per cent of people in the poorest regions.”   However, Mr. De Schutter warned progress has been dangerously uneven, and has sometimes entailed negative impacts for vulnerable groups of land users, as well as wholesale environmental degradation.   Large-scale developments such as dams and mining projects have displaced many marginal farmers in Mexico, often without adequate consultation, according to testimonies heard by the Special Rapporteur.   In China, local-level authorities have often allowed land-grabbing at the expense of poor rural households. And between 50 and 80 per cent of the 2.25 million nomads on the Tibetan plateau may be relocated into settlements close to rural cities, overhauling the food and farming practices of this vulnerable community as part of a programme to abandon nomadic life and modernize agriculture.   “Emerging countries face the huge task of feeding fast-growing populations whose increasing wealth is exerting new pressures on scant resources. They must secure and strengthen their food production bases as a matter of urgency; and they will only do so by working with farmers and their organizations, rather than against them,” he urged.   * Olivier De Schutter is the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food. He is independent from any government or organization. Visit the related web page
	View more stories