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Zimbabwe: UN Commission on Sustainable Development Meets
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 Published by the government of Zimbabwe |
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The Herald (Harare)
7 May 2008
Posted to the web 7 May 2008
Harare
The United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development chaired by Mr Francis Nhema met on Monday in Geneva, Switzerland for its sixteenth session, which opened a two year-cycle aimed at tackling critical issues related to increased global food crisis.
The sixteenth session will be running for two weeks engaging in full discussion for enhanced productivity and sustainable development.
With the soaring global prices of oil, food staples and sparking riots across the world, the commission's agenda for the next two years will focus mainly on agriculture, land use, rural development, drought and desertification.
Mr Nhema said this was to influence the global effort to devise a concrete and comprehensive action plan for food security, covering immediate needs, as well as medium and long- term solutions. Estimates that the world's population would reach 9 billion by 2050 meant that the pressure on agricultural production would only increase, Mr Nhema said. With regards to trade, he said, "without a fair trade system, no long-term progress was possible in providing developing countries with access to markets," adding that major players were to play pivotal role to the effect.
The spikes in food and commodities prices have exacerbated the existing poverty and malnutrition, especially for Africa and the small island developing nations. The commission also noted that agricultural production had been slowing since the 1970s, even as demand for food had been increasing. The impact of climate change, Mr Nhema said, which if left unchecked, could do serious damage to tropical agriculture, especially in Africa and South Asia, which would have an additional 1,8 billion people to feed by 2050.
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Furthermore, the public agricultural research and development system that played a vital role in the first "green revolution" had been starved of funds as donors had reduced their support for agriculture. On the other hand, rising prosperity and changing diets had resulted in increased demand for food.
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