A/42/427
English
Page 132
There are many contradictions in agricultural development. The blind imitation of models developed under different circumstances will have to give way to the realities and conditions existing in Africa. Large areas of virgin land have been opened up for export crops whose prices keeps declining. This is not in the interest of developing countries. There are so many problems to be overcome that we forget that every problem is an opportunity to do something positive. This is an opportunity for us to think of conservation and environment in a broad educational context. In doing so, we will be able to capture the next generation and demonstrate the wonder and the benefits of the world around them.
Adolfo Mascarenhas
IUCN Hatare Office
WCED Public Hearing
Hatare, 18 Sept 1986
Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa have much unused land, although its quality and quantity vary greatly from nation to nation and much of it is ecologically vlnerable.[1] The Soviet Union and parts of North America have significant amounts of frontier land suitable for agriculture; only Asia and Europe are truly land-starved.
39. Global food security also depends on ensuring that all people, even the poorest of the poor, can get food. While on the world scale this challenge requires a reappraisal of global food distribution, the task weighs more immediately and heavily on national governments. Inequitable distribution of production assets, unemployment, and underemployment are at the heart of the problem of hunger in many countries.
40. Rapid, sound agricultural development will mean not only more food but more opportunities for people to earn money to purchase food. Thus when countries with untapped agricultural resources provide food by importing more, they are effectively importing unemployment. By the same token, countries that are subsidizing food exports are increasing unemployment in food-importing countries. This marginalizes people, and marqinalized people are forced to destroy the resource base to survive. Shifting production to food-deficit countries and to the resource-poor farmers within those countries is a way of securing sustainable livelihoods.
41. Conserving the agricultural resource base and livelihood security of the poor can be mutually supportive in three ways. First, secure resources and adequate livelihoods lead to good husbandry and sustainable management. Second, they ease rural-to-urban migration, stimulate agricultural production from resources that otherwise would be underused, and reduce the need for food to be produced elsewhere. Third, by combating poverty, they help to slow population growth.
- ↑ FAO, 'Potential Population Supportinq Capacities of Lands, in the Developing World (Rome: 1982).
