The World Food Summit adopted a resolution yesterday. Some immediately called it “toothless,” but it does contain this welcome call for the conservation and use of agrobiodiversity.
Any recipe for confronting the challenges of climate change must allow for mitigation options and a firm commitment to the adaptation of agriculture, including through conservation and sustainable use of genetic resources for food and agriculture.
I wonder to what extent the delegates were swayed by Libya’s Muammar El-Gheddafi and his call on “FAO to set up improved seed banks to address food security.”
Just guessing, but how does “not at all” sound?
Goal of the meeting: more money for agricultural aid because the demographic clock is still ticking. Where did I hear that before?
Little problem with FAO’s maths:
“Diouf wanted 44 billion dollars in aid for agriculture each year … The FAO argues that much of this money could come from raising the share for agriculture in ODA, which totalled 119.8 billion dollars in 2008, to 18-19 percent from the current level of around five percent.”
My calculator says that 19 percent of 119.8 make 22.8, rounded…
Something from José Manuel Barroso Durão which will please readers of this blog:
“Bio-diversity is also an important part of the solution, and I think we have undervalued its contribution both in tackling climate change and food insecurity. It deserves much more high level attention.
These three issues – food security, climate change, and biodiversity are deeply interwoven. We need to think through the policies which will enable us to tackle each of them successfully. These are important and difficult challenges, but I am determined to tackle them in the next mandate of the European Commission.”