UN Report Calls For New Ways to Tackle Food and Water Security
- Wednesday, 01 February 2012
Background
The report ‘Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future worth Choosing’, has been released by the high-level United Nations Panel on Global Sustainability. It contains 56 recommendations, which seek to put into practice sustainable development around the world.
Comment
The recommendations indicate a real desire by those on the panel to make necessary global changes to eradicate poverty, reduce inequality, make growth inclusive, and to ensure that production and consumption are more sustainable. The panel believes that the current global development model is unsustainable. ‘If we fail to resolve the sustainable development dilemma, we run the risk of condemning up to three billion members of our human family to a life of endemic poverty,’ the report says.[1]
Central to the recommendations is a desire that people from different areas of speciality start working more collaboratively. It is a common desire, also expressed at the Food and Water Security Roundtables, held regularly across Australia by Future Directions International. The report says that there is a need for a so-called ‘new political economy’ for sustainable development to improve the interface between environmental science and policy. The new political economy would recognise that sometimes there is a market failure that requires both regulation and the pricing of environmental externalities. ‘For too long, economists, social activists and environmental scientists have simply talked past each other – almost speaking different languages, or at least different dialects,’ the report says.
The panel desires the development of a common language in a sustainable way and its introduction in mainstream economics. The report also speaks about the need to embrace a new nexus between food, water and energy, rather than treating them in different silos. With this approach it would be possible to have a second green revolution that doubles yields, but is based on sustainable principles.
The co-chair of the panel, President Halonen and panel members Gro Harlem Brundtland, Connie Hedegaard and Jairam Ramesh, will launch the report tomorrow (2 February 2012) at the 12th Delhi Sustainable Development Summit. The report will also be released to the international community on 6 February in Geneva, Switzerland. The guest speaker will be Micheline Calmy-Rey, former president of Switzerland and a member of the panel.
The report addresses the very concerns that have been expressed by Future Directions International. It echoes the desires of many of FDI’s Associates, expressed at various FDI roundtables.
With food security firmly on the international agenda, it may just be possible that some tangible reforms could reach fruition, thereby ensuring food security for the world’s vulnerable people.
For a copy of the report, click HERE.
Gary Kleyn
Manager
Global Food and Water Crises Research Programme
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
*****