Bold steps urged for Madrid food summit
|
* News peg: High Level Meeting on Food Security for All, Madrid 26-27 Jan.
MADRID: Bold steps are needed in Madrid this week for the one in six people going hungry across the globe. “Just $30 billion a year would boost agriculture in developing countries – helping to feed nearly one billion people,” said Alex Wijeratna, ActionAid’s hunger campaigner. “The new Global Partnership on food needs to be a channelfor fresh funding,” said Wijeratna. “Despite pledges of $22 billion last year – only 10 per cent was delivered – and most of that went on emergency food aid. Short-term social assistance is vital to feed people but this must go hand in hand with long term plans to help poor people grow food sustainably and get out of a cycle of hunger and poverty. “The global food crisis is draining the life blood out of poor countries. It’s time to broker a new deal on hunger,” said ActionAid’s Alex Wijeratna. Investing in smallholders, especially women, is vital to increasing food production. Sixty per cent of the chronically hungry are women, producing 60-80 per cent of the food but owning only one per cent of the land. In a year when solutions to climate change are being sought, the proposed Global Partnership on Agriculture and Food Security needs to encourage donors to support smallholder farmers. “The partnership needs to help reform agriculture away from intensive industrial practices, which emit the second largest amount of global greenhouse gases,“ said Esther Pino, Head of Policy with Ayuda en Accion, Spain’s largest development NGO. But it is farmers in developing countries who feel the worst impact of climate change and need to be supported to adapt. “This initiative must focus on supporting governments in the delivery of national food security strategies, with donors and developing countries accountable and clear benchmarks to monitor progress,” said Franciso Sarmento, ActionAid’s head of Food Rights. “Farmers and civil society groups must have an equal say in decision-making.” ENDS Note to Editors: ActionAid is an international anti-poverty agency working in 50 countries taking sides with poor people to end poverty and injustice together www.actionaid.org ActionAid’s HungerFREE campaign calls on governments to deliver on their commitment to halve world hunger by 2015. Ayuda en Acción is a partner of ActionAid’s, founded in 1981, working in development, in 21 countries across the globe. www.ayudaenacción.org Joint statement on the Madrid Summit by ActionAid and Ayuda en Accion ActionAid and Ayuda en Accion consider very necessary the initiative of the Spanish Government and the UN High-Level Taskforce on the Global Food Crisis for convening the High-Level meeting on Food Security for All, Madrid 26-27 January. Meeting our 1996 World Food Summit commitments would have resulted in less than 600 million people facing acute hunger in 2008, instead, we now have close to a billion people facing hunger amidst a global food, financial and climate crisis.[Note:1] We thus welcome efforts to form a Global Partnership for Agriculture and Food Security (GPAFS) that helps halve hunger by 2015 (MDG 1) and enables governments to fully realize the human right to adequate food.[Note:2] A coordinated UN-led effort to address both the systemic and immediate challenges of global food security is urgently needed. ActionAid and Ayuda en Accion believe that the partnership needs to set a bold and ambitious rights-based agenda as a response to the global food crisis. To achieve this, we are calling on the Global Partnership to pay bparticular attention to the following areas: • The Global Partnership must address decades of neglect in the agriculture sector and place small-holder farmers, women and agro-ecological approaches at the heart of the response. The FAO estimates that at least $30 billion a year is needed to revitalise agriculture. The current approaches and levels of funding fall woefully short and often lead to further indebtedness of small-holder farmers. • The initiative must focus on rapid mobilisation of incremental resources to close the MDG1 financing gap and enable developing countries to fully implement their national food security strategies. Mutual accountability between donors and developing countries and clear benchmarks to monitor progress will be central to the partnership’s success, as will the effective participation of small-holder farmers, landless people, women’s organisations and civil society groups. • Recognising that the majority of small-holders are women, the Partnership must prioritise steps to address discrimination against women in access to land, credit, extension, and inputs. • The Global Partnership should also support governments to put in place comprehensive and statutory social security measures. The need for emergency aid to prevent starvation can be dramatically reduced by social protection policies that enhance productive capacity and reduce vulnerability. Formation of the Partnership ActionAid and Ayuda en Accion strongly endorse a partnership committed to an ‘open and inclusive’ process that fosters ‘mutual accountability’ between all partners. We also believe that the partnership should be UN-led and must afford equal decision-making power to both donor and southern country governments. Open consultations with civil society at the international and national level, with assured participation for civil society input throughout must underpin this process. Primacy should be given to small-holder farmers’ organizations for a seat on any contact group/steering committee that will drive the process. Moreover, any panel of experts that the global partnership forms should be vetted in an open and transparent manner and must include inputs from the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) and the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. Substance of the Global Partnership Comprehensive Framework for Action report forms “a starting point” for the partnership and the food crisis response. The actual response should be based on national right to food strategies that are fully costed by national governments. As such we are encouraged by the emphasis on supporting “country level processes and institutions” proposed by the UN HLTF and the Spanish government proposal. Governments must commit to fully funding these strategies and donors must commit to meeting the financing gap in a time bound manner. The proposal by Spain rightly identifies funding gaps as one of the key priorities of the partnership, however, the Partnership should go further than this and ensure that these financing gaps are being met by donors. In Rome in June 2008 181 countries agreed to ramp up financing in sustainable agriculture as a solution to the food crisis. But despite $22 billion in pledges, only 10 per cent has actually been delivered and most has gone on emergency food aid rather than growing food in a manner that does not harm the planet. The partnership needs to work to re-dress this. This additional funding must be channelled towards clear national food security strategies, developed nationally through democratic institutional mechanisms such as national food security councils. There should be a country by country analysis on the cost of funding such a strategy for achieving MDG 1 and the fulfilment of the right to food. Supporting a shift towards agro-ecological approaches that support small-holders We believe that the partnership should endorse and build upon the conclusions of the IAASTD—the results of 4 years of research and consultations involving 400 experts and civil society, and now endorsed by 57 countries. The report calls on policy-makers to acknowledge the negative environmental externalities of conventional agriculture, to learn from existing agro-ecological initiatives and to look at integrated solutions to agriculture that include social rather than expensive and heavily patented technologies. It argues for a massive push to develop and scale up low-input, organic farming methods-- and with a particular focus on working with women and building on local and traditional knowledge.[Note:3] In a year when the international community is desperately trying to find solutions to the climate crisis, the Global Partnership must accept that industrial agriculture is a major contributor to climate change and that small farmers’ production and livelihoods will be acutely impacted by it. On both counts, urgent action is required. Reforming agriculture away from intensive industrial practices is going to be vital in tackling climate change. The GPAFS must reflect this necessity in its strategies and funding to avoid merely being another source of extra profit for transnational agribusiness. ActionAid and Ayuda en Accion believe that a more direct focus on women is necessary in the Global Partnership. Women are the main producers of food in most developing countries, yet they have less access to extension services, labour, seeds and credit than men. Women’s access to and control over land, seeds, water, credit and extension services should be increased through redistribution and land tenure reforms at national level. ActionAid and Ayuda en Accion welcome the UN Task Force’s recognition that social protection is necessary to build resilience to future food crises and enable citizens to attain decent livelihoods, adequate healthcare and education. At present, the majority of the funding delivered for the food crisis response by donors has gone to food aid. This trend needs to be reversed, and donors and governments must invest in universal, statutory social security mechanisms to mitigate risk and protect assets and livelihoods in times of crisis. ActionAid and Ayuda en Accion agree with the Government of Spain that it is essential for the Global Partnership to tackle global problems affecting food security, including preventing biofuels from displacing food crops, developing mechanisms to reduce price volatility and rebuilding national and regional grain reserves. We believe that biofuels have a negative impact on local communities, food prices and hunger and land grabbing. Targets and subsidies for biofuel consumption in the EU and US are fuelling the corporate takeover of massive tracts of land in the South. Any future ‘consensus’ on biofuels must be based on how bio-fuels could contribute to a low carbon economy, do not displace food crops and are grown sustainably by and for the benefit of local people. In addition, it is important that the GPAFS address the acute concentration of market power in agricultural supply chains. The partnership must assist governments to strengthen oversight and regulation of markets, as well as promoting effective producer organisations. In a number of developing countries and regions, the public sector must also be rebuilt to provide services the private sector is not interested or able to provide. We look forward to a more active and broad-based engagement of civil society in the Global Partnership towards making the right to food a reality and achieving MDG 1. About ActionAid We are an international anti-poverty agency working to end poverty and injustice with a strong focus on the right to food. Formed in 1972, we work with the world’s poorest and most disadvantaged people in 50 countries worldwide. Our Right to Food unit has been actively promoting and supporting civil society networks working on food security in more than 25 countries known as International Food Security Networks (IFSN) since 2004. Our programmatic work includes farmer to farmer exchanges. www.actionaid.org Ayuda en Acción is a partner of ActionAid’s, founded in 1981, working in development, in 21 countries across the globe. www.ayudaenacción.org |
Printable version
top of the page