International Assessment of Agricultural
Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD)
East and
Summary for Decision Makers
Authors: Shelley Feldman (
Statement by Governments
All countries present at the final
intergovernmental plenary session held in
All countries see these Reports as
a valuable and important contribution to our understanding on agricultural
knowledge, science and technology for development recognizing the need to
further deepen our understanding of the challenges ahead. This Assessment is a
constructive initiative and important contribution that all governments need to
take forward to ensure that agricultural knowledge, science and technology
fulfills its potential to meet the development and sustainability goals of the
reduction of hunger and poverty, the improvement of rural livelihoods and human
health, and facilitating equitable, socially, environmentally and economically
sustainable development. In accordance with the above statement, the following
governments approve the East and
Bangladesh, Bhutan, China (People’s Republic of), India, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Maldives, Philippines, Republic of Palau, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Vietnam (11 countries)
While approving the above statement the following government
did not fully approve the East and
…There is
nothing more difficult to arrange, more doubtful of success, more dangerous to
carry through than initiating change…The innovator makes enemies of all those
who prosper under the old order, and only lukewarm support is forthcoming from
those who would prosper under the new. Nicolas Machiavelli, The Prince, 1513
Preface
In August 2002, the World Bank and
the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations initiated a
global consultative process to determine whether an international assessment of
agricultural knowledge, science and technology (AKST) was needed. This was
stimulated by discussions at the World Bank with the private sector and
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) on the state of scientific understanding
of biotechnology and more specifically transgenics. During 2003, eleven
consultations were held, overseen by an international multistakeholder steering
committee and involving over 800 participants from all relevant stakeholder
groups, e.g., governments, the private sector and civil society. Based on these
consultations the steering committee recommended to an Intergovernmental Plenary
meeting in Nairobi, Kenya in September 2004 that an international assessment of
the role of agricultural knowledge, science and technology (AKST) in reducing
hunger and poverty, improving rural livelihoods and facilitating environmentally,
socially and economically sustainable development was needed. The concept of an International Assessment of
Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) was endorsed as a
multi-thematic, multi-spatial, multi-temporal intergovernmental process with a
multistakeholder Bureau cosponsored by the Food and Agricultural Organization
of the United Nations (FAO), the Global Environment Facility (GEF), United
Nations Development Program (UNDP), United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP), United Nations Education Science and Cultural Organization (UNESCO),
the World Bank, and World Health Organization (WHO).
The IAASTD’s governance structure is a unique hybrid of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the nongovernmental Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA). The stakeholder composition of the Bureau was agreed at the Intergovernmental Plenary meeting in Nairobi; it is geographically balanced and multistakeholder with 30 government and 30 civil society representatives (NGOs, producer and consumer groups, private sector entities and international organizations) in order to ensure ownership of the process and findings by a range of stakeholders.
About 400 of the world’s experts were selected by the Bureau, following nominations by stakeholder groups, to prepare the IAASTD Report (comprised of a Global and 5 sub-Global assessments). These experts worked in their own capacity and did not represent any particular stakeholder group. Additional individuals, organizations and governments were involved in the peer review process.
The IAASTD development and sustainability goals were endorsed at the first Intergovernmental Plenary and are consistent with a subset of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs): the reduction of hunger and poverty, the improvement of rural livelihoods and human health, and facilitating equitable, socially, environmentally and economically sustainable development. Realizing these goals requires acknowledging the multifunctionality of agriculture: the challenge is to simultaneously meet development and sustainability goals while increasing agricultural production.
Meeting these goals has to be placed in the context of a rapidly changing world of urbanization, growing inequities, human migration, globalization, changing dietary preferences, climate change, environmental degradation, a trend toward biofuels and an increasing population. These conditions are affecting local and global food security and putting pressure on productive capacity and ecosystems. Hence there are unprecedented challenges ahead in providing food within a global trading system where there are other competing uses for agricultural and other natural resources. AKST alone cannot solve these problems, which are caused by complex political and social dynamics, but it can make a major contribution to meeting development and sustainability goals. Never before has it been more important for the world to generate and use AKST.
Given the focus on hunger, poverty and livelihoods, the IAASTD pays special attention to the current situation, issues and potential opportunities to redirect the current AKST system to improve the situation for poor rural people, especially small-scale farmers, rural laborers and others with limited resources. It addresses issues critical to formulating policy and provides information for decision makers confronting conflicting views on contentious issues such as the environmental consequences of productivity increases, environmental and human health impacts of transgenic crops, the consequences of bioenergy development on the environment and on the long-term availability and price of food, and the implications of climate change on agricultural production. The Bureau agreed that the scope of the assessment needed to go beyond the narrow confines of S&T and should encompass other types of relevant knowledge (e.g., knowledge held by agricultural producers, consumers and end users) and that it should also include assess the role of institutions, organizations, governance, markets and trade.
The IAASTD is a multidisciplinary and
multistakeholder enterprise requiring the use and integration of information,
tools and models from different knowledge paradigms including local and traditional
knowledge. The
IAASTD does not advocate specific policies or practices; it assessed the major
issues facing AKST and points towards a range of AKST options for action that
meet development and sustainability goals. It is policy relevant, but not
policy prescriptive. It integrates scientific information on a range of topics
that are critically interlinked, but often addressed independently, i.e.,
agriculture, poverty, hunger, human health, natural resources, environment,
development and innovation. It will enable decision makers to bring a richer
base of knowledge to bear on policy and management decisions on issues previously
viewed in isolation. Knowledge gained from historical analysis (typically the
past 50 years) and an analysis of some future development alternatives to 2050
form the basis for assessing options for action on science and technology,
capacity development, institutions and policies, and investments.
The IAASTD is conducted according to an open, transparent, representative and legitimate process; is evidence-based; presents options rather than recommendations; encompasses risk assessment, management and communication; assesses different local, regional and global perspectives; presents different views, acknowledging that there can be more than one interpretation of the same evidence based on different world views, with quantification of uncertainties, where possible; and identifies the key scientific uncertainties and areas on which research could be focused to advance development and sustainability goals.
The IAASTD, is composed of a Global assessment and five sub-Global assessments (Central and West Asia and North Africa - CWANA; East and South Asia and the Pacific - ESAP; Latin America and the Caribbean - LAC; North America and Europe - NAE; sub-Saharan Africa - SSA). It (i) assesses the generation, access, dissemination and use of public and private sector AKST in relation to the goals using local, traditional and formal knowledge; (ii) analyzes existing and emerging technologies, practices, policies and institutions and their impact on the goals; (iii) provides information for decision makers in different civil society, private and public organizations on options for improving policies, practices, institutional and organizational arrangements to enable AKST to meet the goals; (iv) brings together a range of stakeholders (consumers, governments, international agencies and research organizations, NGOs, private sector, producers, the scientific community) involved in the agricultural sector and rural development to share their experiences, views, understanding and vision for the future; and (v) identifies options for future public and private investments in AKST. In addition, the IAASTD will enhance local and regional capacity to design, implement and utilize similar assessments.
In this assessment agriculture is used to mean agriculture in the widest sense however, as in all assessments, some topics were covered less extensively than others (e.g., livestock, forestry, fisheries, the agricultural sector of small island countries), largely due to the composition of the selected authors.
The IAASTD draft Report was subjected to two rounds of
peer review by governments, organizations and individuals. These drafts were
placed on an open access web site and open to comments by anyone. The authors
revised the drafts based on numerous peer review comments, with the assistance
of review editors who were responsible for ensuring the comments were
appropriately taken into account. One of the most difficult
issues authors had to address was criticisms that the report was too negative.
In a scientific review based on empirical evidence, this is always a difficult
comment to respond to, as criteria are needed in order to say whether something
is negative or positive. Another difficulty was responding to the conflicting
views expressed by reviewers. The difference in views was not surprising given
the range of stakeholder interests and perspectives. Thus one of the key
findings of the IAASTD is that there are diverse and conflicting
interpretations of past and current events, which need to be acknowledged, and
respected.
The Global and sub-Global Summaries
for Decision Makers and the Executive Summary of the Synthesis Report were approved
at an Intergovernmental Plenary in
The IAASTD builds on and adds value to a number of recent assessments and reports that have provided valuable information relevant to the agricultural sector, but have not specifically focused on the future role of AKST, the institutional dimensions and the multifunctionality of agriculture. These include: FAO State of Food Insecurity in the World (yearly); IFPRI Global Hunger Indices (yearly); InterAcademy Council Report: Realizing the Promise and Potential of African Agriculture (2004); UN Millennium Project Task Force on Hunger (2005); Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005); CGIAR Science Council Strategy and Priority Setting Exercise (2006); Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture: Guiding Policy Investments in Water, Food, Livelihoods and Environment (2007); Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Reports (2001 and 2007); UNEP Fourth Global Environmental Outlook (2007); World Bank World Development Report: Agriculture for Development (2007); and World Bank Internal Report of Investments in SSA (2007).
Financial support was provided to
the IAASTD by the cosponsoring agencies, the governments of
The Global and sub-Global Summaries for Decision Makers and the Synthesis Report are written for a range of stakeholders, i.e., government policy makers, private sector, NGOs, producer and consumer groups, international organizations and the scientific community. There are no recommendations, only options for action. The options for action are not prioritized because different options are actionable by different stakeholders, each of whom have a different set of priorities and responsibilities and operate in different socio-economic-political circumstances.
East
and
Summary
for Decision Makers
Governments, private sector, civil
society and other major actors in the East and
Insert
Figure ESAP-SDM-1. Under-nourishment persists despite growth in food
production.
The population of those dependent on agriculture for subsistence and livelihoods is not declining proportionate to the decline in the share of agriculture in the national income in most of ESAP. The size of landholdings is declining and production resources are shrinking. Moreover, the agricultural work force is becoming increasingly feminized and older.
The agricultural sector’s development path has led to the erosion and depletion of soil and water resources, the loss of biodiversity, and water and atmospheric pollution that degrades the environment and contributes to global warming. This situation threatens the development of the agricultural and industrial sectors, and food security and demands serious reconsideration in assessing the growth options for the region.
Contexts and Challenges
ESAP is a heterogeneous region with wide variation in agroclimatic zones and biodiversity, levels of economic development, social infrastructure, human well-being and the capacity to respond to disasters and crises. The industrialized and industrializing countries of ESAP have achieved high levels of well-being and are recognized as new centers of manufacturing with the result that ESAP now accounts for a major share of world economic output and economic growth. Agriculture’s contribution to the national income and exports in most ESAP countries is declining. While migration into manufacturing, construction and services, whether informal or formal, has reduced the population dependent on agriculture and increased the contribution of remittances to rural income, the share of the population dependent on agriculture continues to be high, even in the rapidly industrializing ESAP countries. [Ch 1, 4]
Most of the region—particularly
Bangladesh, Indonesia, China, India, Maldives, the Philippines and Vietnam—is
prone to high incidences of natural disasters and has high population pressure
on land, along with declining average sizes of agricultural holdings. Some
countries, including
The increasingly female labor force
in agriculture often lacks basic services, education and health care. Their
limited access to productive assets and essential services further worsens
their situation, particularly in South Asia and many parts of
ESAP’s growing domestic markets provide a strong base for agriculture. Growing incomes have led to a dietary shift from mainly cereals to animal and milk products, fruits and vegetables. This shift has highlighted issues in the supply of consistent quality and safe food as well as problems of postharvest care and processing. [Ch 1, 2]
The Green Revolution brought a major change in agriculture based on the extension of irrigation and high-yielding seed varieties responsive to increased doses of nutrients and pesticides and other inputs. Consequently, many countries moved from being importers to exporters of cereals. In fisheries and forestry there has been a shift from the harvesting of wild stocks to cultivated production (aquaculture and plantation forestry) and from extensive livestock farming to mixed farming and intensive commercial livestock production systems.
This input intensive cultivation in
various agricultural sub-sectors has led to many of the environmental
challenges in the ESAP region. They affect ecosystems, whether forests, arable
lands, rangelands (e.g. in
Natural resources, especially freshwater, coastal waters and arable and forest land, will increasingly be subject to serious pressure from competing sectors [Ch 4]. Along with continuing increases in agricultural production, intensive agriculture and the tendency to overuse agrochemicals in certain regions and crops will worsen the current degradation of soil and water quality and biodiversity.
Some of the developing countries in the region are paying increasing attention to eco-friendly technologies and policies and investing in natural resource improvement. Pockets of success include diversification into high-value perennials, organic agriculture, agroforestry, renewable energy and community-based NRM projects. The developed countries also invest significantly in environment friendly development. Many governments are parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. More generally, responses range from mandatory assessment of the impact of all programs, technologies, and development interventions on the biological resource base to a ban on all genetically modified crops and organisms. Despite these changes, environmental degradation is likely to increase, along with the worsening impacts of climate change, which will amplify the already existing high incidence of natural disasters in most of ESAP.
ESAP has so far presented a mixed
picture with regard to adoption of transgenics.
Insert Figure ESAP-SDM-2. Climate change
impacts.
Climate change and variability will emerge as major threats to the agricultural sector in most of the ESAP region [Ch 4]. Projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) show that climate change will increase occurrence of natural hazards; increase average air temperatures; change precipitation patterns; increase sea levels with resulting inundation of the coastal areas (low lying islands and deltaic regions are particularly vulnerable); increase soil and water salinity; and provide and new and more favorable environments for pests and diseases. These conditions will have adverse implications for agricultural productivity and livelihoods [Ch 4]. The frequency and magnitude of these changes in developing countries of ESAP that are already vulnerable to these hazards and dependent on agriculture is of particular concern. Outcomes of these climate related disturbances will certainly be decreases in production and worsening poverty in affected areas, with spillovers.
|
Major Challenges in the ESAP Region 1. Productivity and quality of agricultural and food
systems Ø Increase food production through the
enhanced productivity of resource use Ø Build competitive advantage in high
value sub-sectors Ø Improve food quality and safety Ø Broaden the base of growth in rain
fed agriculture and marginal ecosystems Ø Change the price equations of
production and technology decisions Ø Improve animal disease control Ø Mitigate risk and enhance risk
taking capacity Ø Enhance the availability of
affordable inputs and credit 2. Rural employment, livelihoods and poverty Ø Reduce high levels of rural poverty Ø Enhance non-farm employment
opportunities Ø Reduce gender inequality and social
exclusion Ø Develop rural social safety nets Ø Enhance access to and development of
markets 3. Environment, science and technology Ø Integrate environmental concerns
(for example climate change) into
agricultural development and natural resource management (NRM) decisions Ø Reverse the loss of traditional and
indigenous knowledge Ø Build capacities in frontier science
Ø Build effective systems for the generation,
assessment and utilization of science and technology Ø Linking research and extension
services |
There are many options available to address these challenges. They pose specific challenges for the different stakeholders – (governments, the private sector, and civil society organizations) who work with farmers and the rural poor in different ecosystems in ways that lead to socially and environmentally sustainable outcomes. The options identified and recounted here require that these stakeholders take a keen interest and play a pro-active role in ensuring development. Without this commitment from key decision makers, the downward spiral towards socioeconomic turmoil and ecological degradation may be very rapid and even irreversible. Besides ESAP’s own people, the world looks up to ESAP’s decision makers to once again reveal the optimism and commitment to action that over the past five decades has kept these massive populations largely famine-free. [Ch 2, 3]
Change in Approach to AKST
To meet the goal of environmental sustainability without compromising the social goals of poverty reduction and food security, ESAP countries need to change the content and the practices of AKST. Institutional arrangements and macro-level policies that enable effective linkages of AKST with development stakeholders and goals are also required. This requires a shift from a focus on production enhancing technologies to combining production with environmental concerns. In brief this entails understanding the multiple roles and functions of agriculture. This also entails acknowledging the role of farmers as more than producers of agricultural commodities; they must also be viewed as critical managers of ecosystems.
In a situation of growing competition for water, land and other resources, and increasing environmental challenges, AKST needs technological advances that can increase the efficiency of resource use in diverse environments. Unlike the Green Revolution era that demanded capacities for applied research for crop production, the magnitude and variety of current social, technological, and ecological challenges requires significant investments in the basic sciences as well. The skill base of AKST needs to include social, economic, political and legal knowledge in addition to fundamental scientific knowledge. Institutional reforms within science might include new ways of reporting and evaluating science and technology, new criteria of attribution and causality, and new public/private partnerships, consultative processes for decision making and learning processes. Increasing regional and international cooperation also are critical in building advanced regional scientific capacity.
Synergies between increased production, improved livelihoods and increased supply of environmental services can help in reducing the costs of meeting environmental sustainability; but it is also likely that, in specific cases, there are tradeoffs between these various goals. The options for actions offered below address agricultural production and productivity, rural poverty, and environmental challenges. While these are presented in this document as discrete actions, they should be read as parts of an integrated approach to using AKST to meet development and sustainability goals.
Options for Action
1. Increasing agricultural
production and productivity
With a plateau of productivity in key Green Revolution areas, achieving increases in food and other agricultural production necessitates broadening the base of agricultural growth to include areas of rain fed agriculture and marginal ecosystems. In these areas, the challenges faced by agriculture are only partially constrained by technological possibilities, but more AKST for small scale sustainable agriculture and rainfed or marginal areas is warranted. Institutional changes also are necessary to bring farm households into the cycle of growth and increased productivity. Increasing public investment in irrigation, moisture retention, and infrastructure development, including improvements in market access, depends on a political commitment to neglected regions and crops in national calculations. Growth in these areas also depends on the development of biodiversity intensive farming systems as well as improved technologies for example high yielding varieties for dryland crops, including crops such as oil seeds and pulses that are tolerant to drought, flooding and other characteristics of uncontrolled environments compared to the relatively controlled environment of irrigated agriculture. [Ch 5]
Private sector research, which concentrates on internationally traded crops, is unlikely to find it profitable, at least in the short to medium-term, to invest in the quintessential rainfed crops. Public sector research offers some improved technologies for rainfed crop and livestock production, but some of these have yet to be commercialized and has yet to deliver rural management practices, extension systems and institutional arrangements that can substantially increase production and reduce poverty in the rainfed areas. It may be necessary to substantially increase support for publicly funded research on these crops and regions and to address changes in organizational and institutional arrangements that would create a sustainable cropping system. Focusing only on increasing production and productivity and leaving markets to respond to questions of income distribution and well-being, as has been the general pattern in the ESAP region, may mean that pockets of hunger will persist in the midst of prosperity. [Ch 5]
Advanced information and communication technologies (ICT) will enhance effectiveness of AKST, especially in mountain and remote areas. The increasing knowledge intensive character of agriculture will require information and communication technologies to facilitate rapid dissemination and exchange among farmers, extension workers, researchers and policy makers. AKST effectiveness may be accomplished through context specific, flexible and inter-related decision tools that include e-extension, e-learning modules, and market information systems accessible through mobile technologies and internet kiosks now used among producers in various countries, such as Bangladesh, China, India and the Philippines. [Ch 4, 5]
There are possible advantages and risks attributable to new technologies such as biotechnology, nanotechnology and precision agriculture. In the case of GM crops there is contradictory evidence of advantages and disadvantages (for example, the claimed reductions or increases in herbicide and pesticide use) [Ch 2]. However, while the region will continue to invest in biotechnology, more public sector attention will be necessary to focus on poverty-relevant applications of biotechnology that reduce costs, such as that offered by marker-aided selection in plant breeding, animal production systems for vaccines and essential drugs, and other veterinary and environmental applications.
There are possibilities for building competitive advantage in high-value commodities. With higher incomes there is an increase in the share of high value and high quality products, including animal and milk products, in food consumption. ESAP itself is a growing regional market that can offer opportunities for agricultural producers in ESAP who could be encouraged by preferential tariff reductions and special access for least developed countries (LDCs) and small island economies [Ch. 3, 5]. While integrated crop-livestock systems and access to common property resources for herders and pastoralists may become crucial for poverty alleviation, there may be increasing investments in high-technology animal production systems.
A large part of higher value markets, however, are increasingly organized in retail chains. This can marginalize small-scale producers but also provide opportunities for upgrading small-scale production through value-added activities. The share of agricultural incomes can be increased, provided small-scale producers can be organized in cooperatives or producer groups, acquire the necessary capital and technology, develop management skills and overcome problems in dealing with scale requirements, including certification [Ch 3]. Many small island countries face unique challenges with respect to increasing agricultural production and productivity due to their geographic isolation, small population sizes, limited land area and high transportation and production costs.
The expansion of domestic markets for processed foods and beverages along with growth in agricultural trade has led to increasing awareness of food safety and quality in the region. Despite the acceptance of international food safety regulations such as Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP), with the exception of a few countries, many governments in ESAP have not taken adequate actions to address safety and quality. Responding to emerging human and livestock health issues, such as avian influenza and foot and mouth disease, will need stringent monitoring and biosecurity and biosafety mechanisms within countries and across the region. But in many countries of ESAP water and sanitation remain a major concern and governments may consider ensuring potable water as a basic input to ensuring food safety and health.
2. Reducing rural poverty and enhancing
well-being
Increased production and productivity are not goals in themselves, but rather means to achieve the goal of enhanced human well-being. Experience of the last half century shows that production efforts need to be supplemented by other measures (such as access for poor people to land, capital, technology and management skills) in order to increase people’s ability to secure improvements in well-being. Complementary policies and interventions that can secure the goal of increased human well-being in rural areas of ESAP are outlined below.
While increased food supply and availability have reduced hunger, human health and nutrition, some parts of ESAP have been adversely affected by some agricultural practices such as use of contaminated water (e.g. heavy metals), and over and inappropriate use of chemical fertilizer and pesticides. While indigenous and traditional knowledge have much to offer to nutrition and human health, political and social responses will be critical to enable partnerships with formal AKST necessary to achieve development and sustainability goals.[1]
Increase investment in public goods and reduce resource-use distorting individual subsidies. Subsidies have played a historic role in enabling ESAP countries to develop cereal production. There are pressures for these subsidies to continue to support livelihood of poor farmers and to maintain self-sufficiency in the cereal production of developing countries. With the opening of trade regimes and increasing environmental awareness there is pressure to reduce subsidies that lead to overuse of scarce resources and to increase investment in public goods, including in infrastructure (irrigation and roads), research and knowledge. Incentives may be extended for adoption of environment friendly technologies.
To the extent that subsidies are
used, they are more effective when they are aimed at bringing about desired
changes, rather than used to support uncompetitive livelihoods. Many countries
have favored conservation-oriented policies focused on forests and rangelands.
The shift to plantation forestry in
In ESAP agricultural exports account for a small and declining share of exports that today is dominated by manufactures and services. However, agricultural exports continue to grow and are critical for the largely small-scale producers they support. In addition to trade in conventional (grain, tea, coffee) and new (fruits, vegetables) agricultural commodities, there is considerable scope for developing organic and fair trade markets where social, sustainable and ethical objectives can overlap. For a number of agricultural exports, market instruments that shift some risk to marketers and financiers can be of use in addressing problems of fluctuations and secular declines in price. It also is possible to diversify output, move up the value chain through processing activities and develop alternative crop uses without compromising food security. International trade negotiations to reduce developed country tariffs for processed products, and capacities to reduce the costs of compliance for millions of small-scale producers also can trigger quality improvements in domestic markets. [Ch 3]
Enable rural populations in noncompetitive sectors to shift to non-farm livelihoods
One of the most problematic areas
of public policy is that of managing changes in livelihoods. With the increased
openness of trade regimes, uneven world markets have led to critical
noncompetitive subsectors in the LDCs and developing countries, while in
developed countries, such as
Even as information and communication technologies reduce the cost of acquiring information, investment in general skills development is still required to assist people in shifting towards or adapting to different livelihoods, particularly those in the non-farm sector. Importantly, there is the need to fashion public policy, provide opportunities for adequate non-farm income and build a climate of public opinion to support this strategy to enable once agricultural producers and their children to value the opportunities afforded by new livelihoods such as skilled work in manufacturing or rural industry. [Ch 3]
Producers in the LDCs and small island economies often are unable to compete with either developed country enterprises (given their technological capacity) or with large developing country producers (who able to utilize economies of scale in activities such as processing and marketing). These economies also have limited fiscal capacity to provide the support allowed under WTO regulations. Besides eliminating developed country subsidies, there is a case for providing technical and capacity-building support to producers in such LDCs along with special access rights in regional and global trade. For many small island economies, non-agricultural livelihoods such as tourism, as well as migration, provide the few options available for increasing rural incomes. [Ch 3]
The current difficulty of ESAP food deficit countries in buying rice in international markets shows the limits to the utilization of trade opportunities for national food availability. Along with the promotion of local production, the ESAP countries can consider using their considerable foreign exchange reserves to set up a regionally managed system of emergency food stocks. Such regionally managed food security stocks can also be of use in meeting emergency needs resulting from the frequent natural disasters in the region.
Establish rural safety nets and
safeguards for small farmers
Increasing market openness can make livelihoods vulnerable and in the absence of social safety nets force the burden of adjustment for economic downturns to fall on the poorest, particularly women. This burden was evident during the 1990s Asian financial crisis when government interventions were concentrated in urban areas, even as return migrations and reductions in remittances pushed much of the burden of the crisis on the rural economy.
In cases where the reduction of import tariffs have resulted in import surges or increased volumes of heavily subsidized imports, which can have negative effects on small farmers, developing countries should be able to take effective measures to ameliorate the impact on their small-scale agricultural sectors.
In the face of volatile international markets, comprehensive safety net measures and social protection systems can help to secure the well-being of the most vulnerable in situations of risk and uncertainty. The experiences of the Asian financial crisis, the tsunami, frequent floods, glacial outbursts, cyclones and droughts, and abnormal price hikes of essentials in many parts of ESAP have built a consciousness among policy makers and the general public that some of the gains of high growth can and should be used to build safety nets for the poor [Ch 3].
Ensure gender equity and social inclusion
The feminization of agriculture in most of the ESAP region means that women comprise a majority of the continuing rural poor. But, despite the opportunities gained from growing markets, the benefits that accrue to women depend on their level of knowledge and access to assets and resources. To increase their productivity and share of income they require gender sensitive technology, access to market and capital and secure property rights [Ch 5]. Moreover it is critical that women be recognized for their role in both paid and unpaid work and as repositories of traditional skills and knowledge.
Religious minorities, low castes
and indigenous or tribal people, too, are subject to forms of exclusion. Landless
and other poor workers, both seasonal and rural and urban longer-term migrants,
face discrimination in access to public services, most crucially in education
and health care. Markets are unable to overcome these exclusions, even though
it is recognized that the performance of the agricultural economy can be
enhanced through the equitable participation of all groups [Ch 5]. A number of
countries in ESAP (e.g.
3. Options to address environmental sustainability
Diverse AKST capacities focusing on new institutional arrangements are required if we are to respond to the changing demands of sustainable production and ecological or biodiversity conservation. Technological and institutional changes are essential to address environmental challenges of the degradation and loss of forest land, and competing demands and degradation of soil and water systems. While AKST has thus far primarily confined itself to production increasing technology generation, it now will need to address environmental sustainability along with productivity enhancing technologies.
Arresting the loss of forests
and grasslands
Degradation and competing uses of land
Rapid urbanization and industrialization in the region leads to competition for productive land resources. In addition, there are problems of increasing land degradation, declining soil fertility, increasing toxicity and salinity/alkalinity. Projects to reclaim degraded lands for arable purposes will only make a small contribution to future growth in food production. Along with increases in productivity there is also a need for systems of compensation, payments and other rewards that might increase the supply of environmental public goods linked to particular forms of land use. These can be coupled with stringent environmental regulations that will ensure the most productive and effective use of limited resources. [Ch 5]
Over-exploitation of water
Agricultural production will be increasingly constrained by the declining availability and degradation of water [Ch 2, 4] with major implications for food production. By the year 2020 per capita water availability is estimated to decline to between 15 and 35% of that available in 1950 [Ch 4]. These challenges can be effectively addressed by incorporating community based watershed management and water sharing arrangements, developing alternative irrigation and drainage systems and establishing appropriate charges for the use of water in cultivation (which also promotes cultivation of less-water using crops).
Priorities, especially in
water-constrained economies, such as
Degradation of the ecosystem
It is predicted that by the year 2020 nitrogen pollution from food production (fertilizer use and domestic animal waste) and consumption systems will increase by 1.3 - 1.6 times in East Asian countries from 2002 levels. ESAP continues to invest in production enhancing technologies that degrade natural resource despite the availability of resource conserving technologies, practices and institutions. They also have yet to offer policies and programs, or encourage participatory institutional arrangements that enable the utilization of these new environment-friendly production technologies. [Ch 4]
Though the genetic engineering of crops and livestock has been promoted as a technological solution to reduce environmental impact (e.g. pollution due to pesticides and herbicides, crop damage from pests and biological generation of pharmaceutical products), in the ESAP region these technologies raise concerns about democratic decision-making and public choice, where decision-making in agricultural science has to be increasingly conscious of the ecological, social and ethical criteria that influence technological choices. [Ch 4, 5]
The environmental technology
business in
Mitigation and adaptation to climate change
Agricultural production in ESAP will
be threatened by climate change and variability. ESAP is divided into two
groups of countries with regard to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions: the
developed countries such as
To mitigate the effects of climate change, AKST development to reduce emissions from agriculture is needed. In order to adapt to climate change, AKST development is required to meet cultivation challenges, such as drought, long inundation, salinity and high temperatures. As water availability will be highly variable over time and space, AKST development also is necessary for conserving water and increasing irrigation efficiency. Pathogens spread due to climate change and new animal diseases will need to be dealt with in order to protect livestock production. The growing demand for biofuels is increasing competition for land leading to conversion of natural forest into plantations, but development of second generation biofuels technology could enable utilization of current poor and marginal lands in an environmentally and socially sustainable manner.
The development of AKST to mitigate and adapt to climate change requires substantial investments in research organizations. For farmers to adopt these technologies targeted financial support will be needed. Payments can be provided to farmers to enable them to switch to technologies that emit less GHGs, or farmers given monetary credits for reductions in GHG emissions. In this way ESAP can contribute to the development of the global carbon market.
Carbon markets are also required to bring about changes in the use of forests. Current payments for afforestation and reforestation can be extended to “avoided deforestation” in the post 2012 era. Since the opportunity costs of not using forests extractively are high in terms of the foregone livelihoods of some of the poorest people of the world (who depend on forests for livelihoods), a system of international payments (through market or non-market methods) would combine equity with reductions in global carbon emissions.
The required technology development,
technology transfers and the financing of incentives (either payments or carbon
credits) for farmers to adopt GHG emission-reducing technologies all require
various types of funding. While carbon markets can provide some of these funds,
there may be need for substantial international funding for such
transformations. As agreed under the
It is certain that ESAP will have substantial numbers of “climate change refugees” from low lying and small island countries, coastal areas and even those with low rainfall. The developed countries may be best placed to finance the required rehabilitation of those whose livelihoods are destroyed by climate change.
Conserving biodiversity
To enhance local involvement and incentives to conserve agricultural biodiversity, governments, the corporate sector and civil society organizations (CSOs) may establish learning platforms which will serve as active repositories of indigenous practices of seed storage, cultivation, and conservation. For the private sector this also may encourage investment in conservation given the increasing importance of bio-prospecting and patenting for industrial and pharmaceutical applications. Alternative cultivation systems, such as ecological agriculture and ecotourism around the theme of genetic wealth, could also increase incentives to conserve biodiversity. Other interventions such as the establishment of biological corridors within a nation would contribute to preserving biodiversity.
Institutional and organizational
change
For AKST, further attention to NRM technologies will be constrained by the fact that many resource-conserving technologies remain unused for want of appropriate policy and institutional arrangements [Ch 4]. The institutional and organizational changes summarized below point to the changes that are required for effective options for action.
There often is a tradeoff between rewarding the development of knowledge through intellectual property rights (IPR) and consequently inhibiting its spread and utilization. Countries may consider regional and bilateral cooperation and the formulation of national IPR systems and providing argumentation for adjusting IPR within the WTO trade rules to meet the needs of small scale farmers and development.
ESAP is a leader in “Open Source Biological Software”[3] which offers a rapidly expanding resource to meet the needs of ESAP’s scientific community and industry. Though only a few groups, often limited to closely networked stakeholders, have the capacity to share or utilize this open source data base, institutional alternatives such as these will undoubtedly prove useful for spreading the use of environmental technologies and monitoring systems. Their effectiveness can be enhanced with the evolution of norms for sharing knowledge and information. Governments will have to decide whether IPRs, Open Source Biological Software or a flexible combination of the two will be the most effective tools for knowledge creation and utilization. [Ch 4]
While local and traditional knowledge systems will become mainstream in parts of some ESAP countries, they are likely to decline in other areas of indigenous, mountain and small island communities where many biodiversity hotspots are located, largely in response to domestic and international markets [Ch 4, 5]. In order for these communities to meet development and sustainability goals, they will need to be multifunctional in their approach to the development of AKST in ESAP. There is an increasing need for investment and new rules for accreditation and access mechanisms in non-formal education, traditional health care, organic agriculture and integrated pest management (IPM). These are options to acknowledge, revive and provide opportunities for economic growth to repositories/practitioners of traditional knowledge.
Institutional arrangements include community-based user committees able to respond to demands for improved natural resource management with secure user and management rights. The success of these initiatives will depend on both public and private stakeholders (corporations and individual households). Environmental protocols in ESAP also face the problem of a lack of compliance that may demand institutional responses to ensure the monitoring and evaluation of compliance mechanisms. Moreover, institutional alternatives to trade-distorting and environmentally damaging subsidies need to be a continued focus of monitoring and evaluation systems. [Ch 3, 4, 5]
Crucially it is farmers and farm households who make production decisions, responding to market-based price incentives. The various measures detailed above to institute charges for resource use (e.g. water), payments for positive environmental products (e.g. improved water quality) and charges for negative environmental products (e.g. methane emissions) would all enable the internalization of what are now externalities. Changing the incentives of the price system through appropriate rewards and charges can help farmers shift to environment-friendly technologies. Setting this up, however, in relatively open economies is a matter of international negotiations and agreements. [Ch 3, 5]
ESAP offers several institutional alternatives for community based land management and for the rehabilitation of degraded land and water bodies. These examples reveal that if rights over competing water use are to be equitably resolved there is need for coherent administrative functions and policies and resolution mechanisms that establish and strengthen inter-ministerial coordination, multistakeholder consultations/management, and multi-sectoral dialogue. The effective design of national and regional water policies and appropriate technologies for basin-wide management is also required. [Ch 4, 5]
Given increasing conflicts over natural resources and environmental insecurity evident in disputes over fishing rights and water sharing, ESAP countries also need to enhance conflict resolution systems and regional cooperation, such as those started with avian influenza, to manage priority conservation programs and monitor pest and disease incidence, as well as monitor development and compliance mechanisms. [Ch 4, 5]
In
When working in isolation existing national, regional and international research institutes, educational, training, ICT and R&D organizations are unable to address the multiple functions of environmentally sustainable agriculture. AKST organizations, therefore, need to increase the involvement of farming communities, enhance research and civil society partnerships, strengthen infrastructure and community resources and widen the participation of non-research stakeholders. Policies and the organization of research also need to consider integrating skills that are currently compartmentalized into laboratory-based science, field work-based extension and hierarchical policy making.
In sum, meeting current and future challenges in ESAP requires
recognizing the multiple functions and roles of agriculture. Key demands on
AKST are conserving resources without degrading the environment and increasing
agricultural production. This includes developing AKST that is able to mitigate
and adapt to climate change. The implementation of global, regional and
national decisions able to bring about shifts in the utilization of AKST is ultimately
the work of myriad farmers, women and men, and farm communities as contributors
and end users. Their knowledge of the interactions of the ecosystems they
manage, and the opportunities offered to them in terms of improved agricultural
and non-farm livelihoods are critical factors in the success of AKST in meeting
the challenges of developing environmentally sustainable production that simultaneously contributes to sustainable livelihoods
and communities.
Annex
Reservations on full Report
Reservations on individual passages
1. The Republic of
2. The Government of India
does not agree with the word ‘substantial’ at its share in global emission is
too low (less than 4%). The statement proposed is ‘But among developing
countries it is necessary to further specify that large economies of