Ladies and Gentlemen
Good morning!
It is a great pleasure for me to be with you for this Civil Society consultation for the 33rd Session of the FAO Regional Conference for Asia and the Pacific. The investment of your time in the next two days and your contribution to this meeting will constitute an invaluable input to the Regional Conference in Asia and the Pacific.
First of all, I wish to remind you of the good news! Our assessment at the end of the MDG period showed that the Asia and the Pacific region dramatically reduced extreme poverty. It met the Millennium Development Goal of reducing the proportion of people living in extreme poverty by half in early 2010, well before the target date of 2015. The region also achieved the MDG 1c target of reducing the proportion of people who suffer from hunger by half. Furthermore, it achieved the largest reduction in the number of undernourished people in the world. These are remarkable achievements we should be proud of.
Let me be clear. While these achievements reflect the efforts of our member governments, they are also reflective of your achievements. The work of Civil Society Organizations has been vital in the progess made so far.
However, I am sorry to say, the world, and this region in particular, is still facing a number of challenges. In the areas of FAO’s mandate, the major challenge is ensuring food security to a growing and urbanizing population that is also becoming more prosperous in economic terms and demanding more nutritious, safe and diversified food. At the same time, we are faced with less land and water available for food production, uncertainty due to climate change, unpredictable food prices and labor shortages in rural areas. We also face frequent natural disasters that take away precious lives and destroy farms and houses people have built through a life time of hard work. Within the past year, just to name a few, we have seen the destruction and consequent suffering caused by a massive earthquake in Nepal, the flooding in Myanmar and in my own home town of Chennai, India, and last month’s Cyclone Winston in Fiji.
FAO’s assessment in 2015 showed that 795 million people around the world do not have access to a sufficient supply of dietary energy to live a healthy life. Of these, 490 million, or nearly two-thirds, live in the Asia and the Pacific region. But the problems run deeper than this. Several billion people suffer from micronutrient deficiencies, and in many countries, the prevalence of stunting in children below five years of age is greater than 40 percent. In addition to undernutrition, obesity is also a serious problem in the Pacific, and it has led to an increase in noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). While obesity is currently much less prevalent in Asia, rates are increasing rapidly. These problems cannot be solved by just producing more grain, as important as that is.
At the same time, achieving food and nutrition security is no longer an issue of insufficient global supplies, particularly in this region, but mainly of lack of access to the means to produce or purchase food. Investing in rural development, establishing social protection systems, building rural urban linkages and focusing on boosting the incomes of the critical agents of change – smallholder family farmers, foresters, fisher folk, rural women and youth – is key to achieving inclusive and equitable growth while tackling the root causes of poverty and hunger.
FAO believes that it is possible to eradicate hunger by 2030. But governments and FAO cannot achieve this without the help of civil society organizations such as yours. Our coordinated approaches require a combination of pro-poor investments in sustainable agriculture and rural development and social protection measures to immediately lift people out of chronic undernourishment and poverty. We need to transform our current input-heavy food systems to make them more sustainable – including reducing food waste and loss – through better management and improved techniques in agriculture, livestock, fisheries and forestry. We also believe that the battle to end poverty must be fought in rural areas, where people depend directly or indirectly on farming, fisheries or forestry for incomes as well as food.
Ladies and Gentlemen
As I said earlier, your work is vital. Your work often-times points out the gaps that few others are addressing. In order to do our work, we need your work.
Indeed, in Asia and the Pacific, FAO has been working for many years with a number of CSOs in technical areas, emergency field operations, training and capacity building, and advocacy of best agricultural practices. More and more, we see that CSOs have been playing an important role in the global, regional and national inter-governmental policy-making, consultations and decision-making processes, treaties and governing bodies facilitated by FAO, including the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), and APRC. In particular, we have noted remarkable contribution and interest from CSOs for the International Year of Family Farming (IYFF) and the recent Multi-Stakeholder Consultation on Agroecology for Asia and the Pacific. We believe that our collaborations will glow further in coming years.
From the experience gained together, we are convinced that taking due consideration of the views of civil society stakeholders in the region would enhance and broadened FAO Member Countries’ decision-making authority.
Today and tomorrow, you are here to exchange civil society’s views, representing various constituencies, on the technical issues we will discuss at the APRC. Given the wide range of interests and direct insights of the situation, needs, and aspirations of diverse constituencies you are representing, I am confident that your collective wisdom will contribute and enrich discussion which could lead to sound conclusions and implementable recommendations for endorsement by the distinguished Ministers.
I wish you a productive and successful Meeting, and I look forward to having Civil Society’s constructive contribution to the Regional Conference discussions.
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