UNEP Executive Director
Addresses Global Forum for Food and Agriculture,
Meets with Key Ministers
The world's agricultural production must
shift to more sustainable patterns - including
greater respect for ecosystems services
and less waste - in order to feed the world's
rapidly increasing population by 2050, said
UNEP Executive Director and UN Under-Secretary-General
Achim Steiner as he addressed the Global
Forum for Food and Agriculture last week
The Forum, which was
held during International Green Week in
Berlin, gave hundreds of representatives
from the worlds of politics, business, science
and civil society chance to share ideas
on agricultural policy within the context
of food security.
The Forum's 2014 theme
was "Empowering Agriculture: Fostering
Resilience - Securing Food and Nutrition"
In the context of the
meeting, Mr. Steiner met with a number of
key Environment and Agricultural Ministers,
including Germany's newly appointed Minister
for the Environment, Nature Conservation,
Building and Nuclear Safety, Dr. Barbara
Hendricks
They discussed issues
related to climate protection, investments
for sustainable management and preparations
for the first meeting of the United Nations
Environment Assembly of the UNEP (UNEA),
which will take place in Nairobi in June
2014
Speaking at the Forum
during a Working Meeting organized by UNEP,
he stressed that, by 2050, the Earth will
likely need to feed some 9 billion people
with the same amount of land, water and
natural resources it has now
He added that, in order
for increases in agricultural production
to be sustainable, humanity must reduce
its massive loss and wastage of food, as
outlined in a soon-to-be-launched UNEP study
entitled: Food Wasted, Food Lost : Improving
Food Security by Restoring Ecosystems and
Reducing Food Loss.
"According to the
report, as much as 1.4 billion hectares
of land are used to produce the total amount
of food that is lost and wasted, estimated
by FAO at a staggering 1.3 billion tonnes
a year", said Mr. Steiner.
"This translates
to more than 100 times the area of tropical
rainforest that is being cleared every year
(13 million hectares) of which 80 per cent
is used for agricultural expansion",
he added
Food loss occurs mostly
at the production stages harvesting, processing
and distribution while food waste typically
takes place at the retailer and consumer
end of the food-supply chain
In industrialized regions,
almost half of the total food squandered,
around 300 million tonnes annually, occurs
because producers, retailers and consumers
discard food that is still fit for consumption
That amounts to more
than the total net food production of Sub-Saharan
Africa, and would be sufficient to feed
the estimated 870 million hungry in today's
world
At the same time, said
Mr. Steiner, up to 25 per cent of the world's
food production - an amount that could feed
up to 2.4 billion people annually - might
be lost by 2050 due to climate change, land
degradation, cropland losses, water scarcity
and infestations
"In order to ensure
that food production is increased to meet
the demands of the additional 2.6 billion
people expected to inhabit the planet by
2050, it is important that food producing
ecosystems are protected and degraded ecosystems
are restored", said Mr. Steiner
Agricultural production
- which is dependent on services provided
by healthy natural ecosystems, from pollination
and water purification to climate change
adaptation - remains the single most important
sector in providing the basic necessities
for human existence and livelihoods today
It is therefore critical
to consider the values of ecosystems and
biodiversity to the agricultural sector,
as well as to human health, livelihoods
and wellbeing
A new study by the Economics
of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) and
the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre
(WCMC), to be launched this year, finds
that without healthy ecosystems, agricultural
systems may suffer if not collapse entirely.
"A profound change
of the global food and agriculture system
is needed if we are to nourish today's 925
million hungry and the additional 2 billion
people expected by 2050", said Mr.
Steiner
"Recognizing that
agriculture, water, land, forests , food
production and consumption are all connected,
the answer to providing food security while
maintaining ecosystems lies in pursuing
a holistic approach that incorporates climate-smart
agriculture and a landscape approach",
he added
"A
landscape approach means managing the land,
water, and forest resources necessary to
meet an area's food security needs and promoting
inclusive green growth as one integrated
system."
