Subject: PANUPS: Sustainable Food Security

From: [email-masked] (PANNA InfoPubs)
Date: 8 Nov 1994 02:43:31 -0000

>From: PANNA InfoPubs <paninfopubs>

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FAO and UNDP Announce Joint Activities to Promote Sustainable 
Food Security

In September 1994, the United Nations Food and Agriculture 
Organization (FAO) and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) 
announced that the two organizations will collaborate on a 
global drive to promote sustainable food security, 
particularly in low-income food-deficit countries where the 
margin between persistent hunger and starvation is narrowing.

"Food security means access by all people at all times to the 
food needed for a healthy life.  Sustainable food security 
aims to achieve this goal without compromising the productive 
capacity of natural resources, the integrity of biological 
systems or environmental quality," FAO Director-General 
Jacques Diouf and UNDP Administrator James Gustave Speth said 
in a joint declaration announcing cooperative activities.  
The declaration also announced the establishment of a special 
FAO/UNDP Sustainable Food Security Task Force to implement 
and monitor their efforts.  

The joint declaration states that despite increases in per 
capita food production globally, food supplies are not 
equitably distributed either across countries or within 
countries, and that food insecurity, poverty and 
environmental degradation go hand in hand.  It also notes 
that policy reform addressing the directly related issues of 
access, gender and equity is essential to improving food 
security.  In low-income food-deficit countries, where the 
bulk of the world's poor live and which will be the focus of 
the joint FAO/UNDP initiative, particular attention will be 
given to local food production and related problems including 
gender issues, human skills development and natural resource 
management capacity.  "In these countries, improvements in 
food production and productivity must be the engine of 
equitable and sustainable development," according to the 
joint FAO/UNDP declaration.  

The joint declaration states that achieving increased food 
security requires changes in four areas and outlines plans of 
action within each:  targeting efforts and investments toward 
sustainable food security; building essential capacities; 
creating an enabling policy environment; and enhancing 
awareness of food security situations and trends.  It 
emphasizes the pressing need for more resilient farming and 
agro-forestry systems that can support higher yields without 
accelerating resource degradation; and gains in productivity 
that result from adoption of agro-ecological methods that 
enhance soil fertility, in combination with improved water 
management, integrated pest management, appropriate seeds, 
and improved technologies, "including indigenous knowledge 
where applicable."  

FAO and UNDP said that their cooperation could bring "more 
focused and higher impact, better managed and better funded 
programs in support of sustainable food security,"  and 
invited others, including national governments, non-
governmental organizations and concerned citizens to join the 
effort.  FAO and UNDP cooperation will focus on:

--increasing the relative importance of joint food security-
related activities and projects, mobilizing additional 
resources and making more efficient use of the resources;

-- developing cooperative activities in support of FAO's 
Special Programme on Food Production in Support of Food 
Security for Low-Income Food-Deficit Countries;

-- strengthening the policy dialogue between the two 
institutions and their efforts to create a policy environment 
favorable to sustainable food security; and

-- increasing coordination of technical cooperation.

No budgets were announced.... 

Source: FAO/UNDP Press Release, September 21, 1994; 
"Cooperative Action to Promote Sustainable Food Security: A 
Joint Declaration by the Heads of FAO and UNDP," September 
21, 1994.
Contact:  Peter Gall, UNDP, New York, phone (212) 906-5312; 
Richard Lydiker, FAO, Rome, Italy, phone (39-6) 5225 3510.

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