Commission on Sustainable Development

Sixteenth Session

8^th & 9^th Meetings (AM & PM)

Commission on Sustainable Development considers how to help africa better manage

natural resources, boost agricultural productivity, modernize infrastructure

With many African economies heavily dependent on agriculture -- a climate-sensitive sector highly vulnerable to economic and environmental shocks -- the Commission on Sustainable Development today began an in-depth consideration of ways to help the continent strengthen the management of its natural resources, boost agricultural productivity, and modernize its transportation and energy infrastructure.

Africa is one of the themes of the Commission’s current cycle alongside agriculture, rural development, land, drought and desertification.  Those issues, taken up during expert panel discussions today and throughout the week, are of particular relevance to Africa, where farming remains the basis of much of the continent’s survival and food self-sufficiency, and where poverty eradication depends on increasing agricultural productivity and boosting the rural economy.

Along with pandemics such as HIV/AIDS, ongoing armed conflicts and pockets of political instability, the recent headline-grabbing surge in global food prices has proved to be yet another obstacle on Africa’s road to sustainable development.  As local food prices have skyrocketed, the continent has been particularly exposed, since the cost of food makes up a large proportion of household budgets and many African countries rely heavily on imports.  Participants in today’s panels repeatedly stressed that diversification into higher-value crops and agro-industries could help reduce the vulnerability of African economies to erratic commodity prices.

The Secretary-General’s latest report measuring Africa’s progress towards achieving the objectives of Agenda 21 -- the landmark United Nations blueprint for action to be taken in every area in which humans impact the environment -- and the 2002 Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, says that sustainable development remains elusive for much of the continent.  It cites extreme poverty as the main impediment to growth, noting that, although poverty rates have been reduced, they are still double those of the developing world as a whole.

Introduced by David O’Connor, Chief of the Policy Integration and Analysis Branch in the Division for Sustainable Development of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the report notes that reinforcement of energy and transport infrastructures appears critical for the region’s development.  Further, improving access to fertilizer, technology and irrigation is necessary in order to increase output and productivity.  Since environmental protection does not combine easily with extreme poverty and demographic pressures, awareness and education about the value and methods of sustainable natural-resource management and biodiversity conservation could be improved.

“In Africa, there is suffering in the midst of plenty,” declared one expert, who stressed that unless Africa was able to harness its abundant natural resources, it would not develop.  No other continent had as much agricultural potential, but African countries lacked the infrastructure to become net food exporters.  Agri-business processing capacities were also lacking and, as a result, Africa relied on the sale of primary commodities rather than value-added products.

“But an industry can’t compete if it has to run on a generator for 13 hours a day,” he said, emphasizing the critical need to boost investment so as to improve the continent’s outdated infrastructure.  Modern information and communications technology could increase competitiveness, which should, alongside increases in productivity, be at the core of development efforts.  In fact, those linked issues were crucial, as productivity was arguably the best way to increase competitiveness because it not only lowered prices, but also reduced production costs.

Stressing Africa’s economic dependence on agriculture, another expert noted that agricultural production nevertheless remained sub-par.  Among the reasons for that were the high prevalence of smallholder subsistence farming; the limited application of modern technology; a weak knowledge base; and poor production and market support infrastructure.  Farming was only one vital part of the full agro-industrial system and growth was necessary across all parts of that value chain -- from the field to the market.  Regional integration would also provide critical opportunities for growth.

During another thematic panel discussion, an expert said land was the most basic means of production through which Africa and other developing countries could achieve goals related to poverty reduction, food security, sustainable natural-resource management, peace and security and equity.  In many communities, however, secure access to land continued to be a challenge owing to the weakness or absence of land rights.  It was, therefore, critical to have institutions that guaranteed access.

The legacy of colonialism, cultural practices such as discrimination against women, and poor governance contributed to inadequate policies and the subsequent poor land-use practices, she said.  While lessons could be drawn from around the world, specific policies should always be crafted in accordance with realities on the ground.  Moreover, it was essential that relevant stakeholders have a sense of ownership over the reforms.  Effective land policies and supportive legislation, coupled with efficient land-administration systems, were also critical to securing land rights for the poor in urban and peri-urban areas.

Opening a panel that highlighted the connections linking climate change, drought and biodiversity loss, an expert said the inexorable warming of the planet was aggravating the conflict between “man and land”.  Rural and agro-based populations were under constant threat -- and often at odds with their neighbours -- as their lands were ravaged by dust storms and wildfires.  With the impact of desertification intensifying due to climate change, partnerships and cooperation were urgently needed to identify strategies for reducing the impacts of global warming, combating desertification and preventing biodiversity loss.

One major challenge was that, while the biggest sources of biodiversity were located in and around tropical and arid regions, the people there were the least informed about what they possessed and how it could be protected, he said.  It was, therefore, crucial to maximize the synergies between, and promote greater public awareness of, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) -- known informally as the “Rio Conventions” -- with a focus on improving fragile ecosystems that supported vulnerable populations, especially in Africa.

The Commission on Sustainable Development will reconvene at 10 a.m. Friday, 9 May, to continue its thematic discussion of Africa, and hold a parallel discussion on the links between all the thematic issues on its 2008-2009 agenda.

Thematic Panel Discussion on Land

In one of two panel discussions this morning, the Commission continued its considerations of obstacles and constraints, lessons learned and best practices in land use.

Commission Vice-Chairperson Tri Tharyat (Indonesia) chaired the discussion, which featured panellists Joan Kagwanja, Economic Affairs Officer at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA); Rowshan Jahan, Programme Coordinator with the Association for Land Reform and Development, Bangladesh; Laureano Del Castillo Pinto, President of the Instituto de Promocion para la Gestion del Agua, Peru; Klaus Deininger, Lead Economist, Rural Development Group, Development Economics Group, World Bank; and Christian Mersmann, Managing Director of the Global Mechanism.

Ms. KAGWANJA said land was the most basic means of production through which Africa and other developing countries could achieve goals related to poverty reduction, food security, sustainable natural-resource management, peace and security and equity.  In many communities, however, secure access to land continued to be a challenge owing to the weakness or absence of land rights.  It was, therefore, critical to have institutions that guaranteed access.

The legacy of colonialism, cultural practices, such as discrimination against women, and poor governance contributed to inadequate policies and the subsequent poor land-use practices, she said.  While lessons could be drawn from around the world, specific policies should always be crafted according to realities on the ground.  Reform of the land-use sector must be coupled with appropriate reforms in other sectors.  Many Governments had learned that centralized approaches were not ideal for land-use strategies, but had instigated haphazard decentralization processes.  In that light, it was essential that relevant stakeholders have a sense of ownership over the reforms.  Effective land policies and supportive legislation, coupled with efficient land-administration systems were also critical to securing land rights for the poor in urban and “peri-urban” areas.

Ms. JAHAN stressed that access to productive resources was the most appropriate proxy to effect poverty eradication, and highlighted the plight of indigenous peoples, women, religious minorities and the urban poor as particularly disadvantaged.  While Bangladesh had a sustainable land-management system based on different laws, good governance and implementation were lacking.  That led to myriad problems, including absentee ownership and high levels of land litigation.  In fact, 77 per cent of Bangladesh’s criminal cases involved land.

Commercialization was also creating a number of problems, she said.  For example, in the field of shrimp cultivation, traditional production systems had given way to commercial ventures and the 20,000 hectares devoted to shrimp production had swelled to 400,000 in 15 years, degrading the Sundarbans, displacing local communities and increasing water pollution.  In light of such challenges, a holistic approach to planning, implementing and follow-up on land-use policies was imperative while a welfare approach was inadequate.  Root causes must be addressed with the involvement of both international instruments and local civil society.

Mr. DEL CASTILLO said Governments in Latin America had traditionally not developed sufficient land-use policies and today, the expansion of extractive industries, as well as the rise of commercial farming, had put increasing pressure on land, which provided an identity for many indigenous people and allowed the rural poor to subsist on farming.

Certainly many believed that the invisible hand of the market could allow the most efficient to take control of the land, he said.  But since perfect markets did not exist, it was necessary to create effective land-tenure and land–use policies.  Madagascar’s land-use management programme was one example of best practices.  It was not useful to have land laws that protected the rights of poor people if they did not know about them.

Mr. DEININGER stressed the importance of land policies as a key to solving today’s food crisis.  To that end, small land holders needed improved access to land.  Given the crisis, a short-term approach was justified, but long-term efforts to address structural deficiencies and inequities were also necessary.

Turning to best practices, he highlighted Viet Nam, which had undertaken legal reforms and mandated joint certificates for men and women; Ethiopia, where 20 million plots had been registered in three years and gender-empowerment had been encouraged through equality initiatives; and Mexico, where constitutional reforms had positively impacted land-use policies.  India, the United Republic of Tanzania and Brazil were also using best practices.  Moving forward, there were a number of areas where the frontiers of land-use management strategies should be pushed, including through impact evaluation, the use of diagnostic tools, and development indicators to quantify and measure progress over time.

Mr. MERSMANN, focusing on how finance could support land-use policies and initiatives, said land was a cross-cutting issue not only for development policy but also for financial investment.  It influenced trade and market access in addition to climate change and adaptation strategies.  If colleagues from ministries of environment and agriculture did not engage early in budgeting, little would be left for sustainable land management.  In fact, international institutions and national Governments had largely halved land-management budgets over the last decade.  But initiatives aimed at adaptation to climate change were a locomotive that might move land up the list of priorities, and Governments should make use of that opportunity.

In the ensuing interactive discussion, many speakers stressed the need for integrated approaches to land-use panning, sustainable land management and land tenure.  Harmonized strategies addressing the interlinked issues of soil, water, crops, livestock, rangeland and forest management, biodiversity, land degradation and climate change were needed.

A few speakers, noting the complexities of land tenure and management policies, stressed the importance of imaginative approaches to policy formulation.  Legislative frameworks should also be designed in such a way that the needs and goals of local communities were prioritized.  Other speakers said there would be no sustainable management of land resources if tenure arrangements were ignored, particularly as they applied to forests and non-farm lands.  Such arrangements could be a catalyst for natural-resource management.

Many speakers agreed that weak institutional structures could undermine even the best policies, calling for improved governance, and for respect for traditional and indigenous practices that had proven effective.  One speaker noted that rural people around the world were facing threats of removal from their lands to make way for mega-developments, and challenged other participants to ask what they had done to protect the human rights of farmers and the rural poor.

Thematic Panel Discussions on Drought and Desertification

DANIEL CARMON (Israel), Commission Vice-Chairperson, set the stage for the Commission’s continuing consideration of its thematic cluster on drought and desertification with a brief summary of yesterday’s opening panel discussion on those topics, during which representatives had cited, among other things, strong linkages between drought, climate change and biodiversity loss.  Speakers had also called for the strengthening of synergies among the “Rio Conventions”, including the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

Today’s panellists were:  Zhang Kebin, College of Soil and Water Conservation, Beijing Forestry University, China; Joost Brouwer, International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) Commission on Ecosystem Management; Sara Scherr, President, Eco-agriculture Partners; Bakary Kante, Director, Division of Environmental Law and Conventions, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP); and Scott Christiansen, Executive Assistant to the Director-General, International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA).

Panellists in the afternoon discussion, which was chaired by Commission Vice-Chairperson Melanie Santizo-Sandoval ( Guatemala), were:  Nir Atzmon, National Forest Commissioner, Israel; Pierpaolo Faggi, Professor of Human Geography, University of Padua, Italy; Christian Mersmann, Managing Director, Global Mechanism; and Carlos E. Gonzalez Vicente, National Forest Commission, Mexico.

Opening the morning panel, which highlighted the connections linking climate change, drought and biodiversity loss, Dr. ZHANG said the inexorable warming of the planet was aggravating the conflict between “man and land”.  As politicians, academics and biologists rushed to repair, or at least slow the pace of, environmental damage wrought by humankind, ordinary people, especially those living in poor countries, were on the move -- searching for ways to stave off poverty and hunger as their groundwater evaporated, croplands withered and livestock died off.  Moreover, rural and agro-based populations were under constant threat -- and often at odds with their neighbours -- as their lands were ravaged by dust storms and wildfires.

He said that, with the impact of desertification intensifying due to climate change, partnerships and cooperation were urgently needed to identify targeted strategies for reducing the impacts of global warming, combating desertification and preventing biodiversity loss.  One major challenge was that, while the biggest sources of biodiversity were located in and around tropical and arid regions, the people there were the least informed about what they possessed and how it could be protected.  It was, therefore, crucial to maximize the synergies between -- and public awareness of -- the three Rio Conventions, with a particular focus on improving fragile ecosystems that supported vulnerable populations, especially in Africa.

Picking up that thread, Dr. BROUWER highlighted his experience as an agricultural scientist and ecologist in the Niger, saying the Sahel subregion, running from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Red Sea in the east, was a transitional eco-region of semi-arid grasslands, savannas, and more than 1,000 permanent or semi-permanent wetland areas that sustained human and animal life.  The seasonal wetlands were very important for migratory birds moving within Africa and on the African-Eurasian flyways.

He said desertification around those fertile areas -- caused by pressure from over-grazing and crop production, and exacerbated by climate change factors ‑- exerted similar pressure on arid areas, so there was a great need for integrated management of wetland and drylands.  “Without integrated management, everybody loses.”  Helping Sahel farmers and pastoralists diversify their crops or change their agricultural practices was making them better stewards of both wetlands and arid areas.  It was important to remember that what people did depended on what they knew, what they were economically capable of doing, and what they wanted to do (socially).

Mr. SCHERR also highlighted some success stories, saying that sustainable dryland management required systematic coordination and integration of strategies for agriculture and land development, and conservation of biodiversity.  However, the challenge of implementing that idea was primarily political.  It was a generally accepted notion that drylands were not suitable for agricultural development and so such areas were routinely starved of investment and research dollars which could, in fact, promote their sustainable development.  But scientists and academics were now pretty certain that arid areas were set to become hubs for agricultural production as more people were forced to move into them and more traditional arable lands and fields shrank.

So the key was to ensure that farmers, pastoralists, nomadic peoples and others who traditionally inhabited dryland areas were helped to become effective producers and effective ecosystem stewards, she said.  It was also important that policymakers and donors draw on the expertise of such peoples while also “thinking, acting and investing on a landscape scale, as well as on a plot and farmland scale”.

She went on to note some strategies for sustainable management in arid regions, including agro-forestry and innovative methods for the domestication and improvement of indigenous species that actually thrived in drylands.  Leadership and capacity-building for innovation was also needed.  In all that, of course, it was crucial to scale up investment in people, as well as soil rehabilitation.  As for next steps, it was important to recognize that solutions would be highly site‑specific, so there was a need to ensure that local communities played a central role in designing and participating in policy discussions.  It was also necessary to promote national and local policies and institutions that would support multi-stakeholder land management.

Mr. KANTE called on stakeholders to enhance the synergies between UNCCD, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) -- known informally as the “Rio Conventions”.  The common denominator was sustainable development.  By strengthening the three treaties and ensuring they worked better together, the international community could stave off a “global sustainability emergency”, of which the current food and commodity price crisis was a harbinger.  There was also a need to use local knowledge to enhance implementation of the Conventions, and to establish regional centres of excellence in desert management to provide a platform for sharing expertise.

Mr. CHRISTIANSEN said it was important to talk to farmers in order to identify problems and help find solutions.  Projects must pay particular attention to the needs of women and youth, and seek new paradigms for partnership and cooperation.  To that end, ICARDA aimed to improve the welfare of poor people and alleviate poverty through research and training in dry areas of the developing world, by increasing the production, productivity and nutritional quality of food, while preserving and enhancing the natural resource base.  In addition, its training activities aimed to improve the capabilities of national agricultural research scientists in developing countries to help them conduct their research independently.  Those activities also fostered the transfer of technology and addressed issues relating to decision-making by farmers.

Opening the afternoon discussion, Dr. ATZMON said that afforestation, which prevented soil erosion, was one of the most efficient tools to help rehabilitate degraded land.  Successful afforestation operations must address:  water harvesting and soil erosion prevention, especially since trees required more water than other plants; tree species selection; high-quality seedling production; planting methods; plantation management; and involvement of the local community.  Site preparation was also very important, particularly when considering combining afforestation with agriculture projects.  Managed properly, afforestation projects could yield myriad socio-economic gains, including wood for fuel, and shelter and food for livestock.

Mr. FAGGI said that successfully combating drought required, among other things, the use of multi-resource systems; reducing the role of “techno‑bureaucracies”, which in many developing countries tried to dissuade farmers and community leaders from adopting traditional mechanisms to address climate anomalies; and fostering local planning in a way that combined traditional and modern systems.

Mr. MERSMANN said that financing schemes for the fight against desertification needed to be based on programmatic rather than project-based approaches.  Such an approach would lead to broader-based policies and plans that could help developing countries tackle more sustainably the wider spectrum of development challenges related to climate change.  Countries adopting that approach would need to seek co-financing through means other than the funding mechanisms currently up and running.  That required the building of new country-level partnerships.

Mr. GONZALEZ, highlighting his country’s experience, said that between 2001 and 2005, the Government of Mexico had rehabilitated some 2.8 million hectares of forestland.  That restoration project had taken a major institutional step by linking all the ministries involved in land management or environmental issues so they could help monitor and fine-tune the effort.  The Ministry of Agriculture was leading the overall project-monitoring effort, and, among other initiatives, had set up an early warning system to alert authorities about the onset of drought.

During the interactive discussions that followed both panels, delegations, representatives of United Nations agencies and civil society groups raised various topics related to conservation and rehabilitation of dryland ecosystems, including afforestation and reforestation.  Several speakers stressed the importance of drawing on traditional knowledge and practices to help combat drought and desertification, especially in the effort to manage natural resources threatened by global warming or irresponsible consumption patterns.

A speaker from the industrialized world stressed the importance of developing adequate monitoring mechanisms and statistical indicators on land and natural resources in order to craft better-targeted strategies to combat desertification.  At the same time, many representatives from the global South were quick to point out that monitoring systems and early warning mechanisms required resources, in some cases long-term funding.  The international community must live up to the commitments it had made at the 1992 Rio de Janeiro “Earth Summit” and the 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development so that developing countries could address existing environmental challenges like drought and emerging concerns such as the effects of climate change.

Participants also cited the vital need to strengthen synergies among the Rio Conventions, and other relevant environmental Conventions in combating land degradation.  It was also important to promote the development of national and regional partnerships, strategies and action plans.

Thematic Panel Discussion on Africa

Commission Chairperson Francis Nhema (Zimbabwe) and Vice-Chairperson Sasa Ojdanic (Serbia) led the panel on the interrelated topics of agriculture and rural development, which featured panellists Gerry Noble, Chief Executive Officer of Microcare and an Irish physician and micro-insurance expert with many years’ experience in Africa; David Tommy, Director of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) Liaison Office in New York; Nebiyeleul Gessese, Senior Industrial Chemical Engineer and Environment Specialist, Global Development Solutions, LLC; and Marjatta Eilitta, Programme Leader, Agribusiness Programme, International Fertilizer Development Centre, Ghana.

DAVID O’CONNOR, Chief of the Policy Integration and Analysis Branch of the Division for Sustainable Development, introduced the report of the Secretary-General on Africa (document E/CN.17/2008/8) by quoting Pliny, who was himself quoting Aristotle:  “There is always something new out of Africa.”

He said the report, which measured progress towards Agenda 21 and the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, said that sustainable development remained elusive for much of the continent.  In highlighting the challenges and impediments to sustainable development in Africa, it emphasized extreme poverty as the main impediment to growth.  Although poverty rates had been reduced, they were still twice those of the developing world as a whole.  Food production levels had also failed to keep pace with population growth rates.  Thus, many Africans remained trapped in dire poverty, heavily dependent on a fragile natural resource base and vulnerable to economic and environmental shocks.

According to the report, the prevalence of armed conflicts and pandemic diseases such as malaria and HIV/AIDS disrupted African societies, he said.  Weak governance remained an issue in many countries, particularly those enjoying windfalls from high oil and mineral prices.  Against that backdrop, African policymakers had been very active in recent years, opening up new prospects for the region.  Oil-exporting countries had seen strong economic growth and the rise of mobile phone use had also opened the way for a range of innovative services.

Yet, the report noted that Africa continued to face substantial challenges that were difficult to manage simultaneously, he said.  The reinforcement of energy and transport infrastructures appeared critical to the region’s development.  Owing to low productivity, agriculture absorbed most available resources, to the detriment of industries.  Improving access to fertilizer, technology and irrigation was necessary to increase output and productivity.  Diversification into higher-value crops and agro-industries could reduce the vulnerability of African economies to erratic commodity prices.  Because the protection of the environment did not necessarily combine easily with extreme poverty and demographic pressures, awareness and education about the value and methods of sustainable natural-resource management and biodiversity conservation could be improved.

Mr. NOBLE opened the interactive discussion by focusing on challenges in the area of health and stressing that in Uganda, as in the rest of Africa, the most common reason for people sliding into extreme poverty was illness, especially in rural areas.  Sick people were unable to work, and must typically spend their limited savings on treatment.  Unfortunately, health financing was complicated and hard to practise in a cost-effective manner, even in developed countries.  But in Africa, the public sector was stretched beyond its limits, while the private health sector was under-funded or under-insured.  Providing health services to communities was only possible if there was stability, but Africa currently had no working model.

He said that, as it attempted to create a reproducible model, Microcare had found that malaria outweighed everything else that African health systems tackled.  Yet, it had also found that the poor were insurable in groups -- even for HIV/AIDS and malaria if sufficient controls were put in place to keep money from disappearing due to fraud.  In fact, the use of information technology was critical as controls such as those created by accurate health records could prevent resources from being wasted.  Because volume was essential for economies of scale, insurance was of key importance.  It not only enabled early care-seeking behaviour, resulting in good health outcomes, it also provided strong incentives for effective prevention.  Insurance ensured a level of cash flow that could sustain a viable health sector across the continent.

Mr. TOMMY said that in Africa there was suffering in the midst of plenty.  If the continent was unable to harness its abundant natural resources, it would fail to develop.  No other continent had as much agricultural potential as Africa, but its countries lacked the infrastructure to become net food exporters.  Agri-business processing capacities were also lacking and, as a result, the continent relied on the sale of primary commodities rather than value-added products.

Stressing that an industry could not compete if it had to run on a generator 13 hours a day, he said improving infrastructure was one of Africa’s most vital needs.  By modernizing the infrastructure, information and communications technology could increase competitiveness, which should, along with increases in productivity, be at the core of development efforts.  In fact, such interlinked issues would be critical as productivity was arguably the best way to increase competitiveness by not only lowering prices, but also reducing production costs.

Mr. GESSESEnoted that, despite Africa’s economic dependence on agriculture, agricultural production remained sub-par.  Among the reasons for that were the high prevalence of smallholder subsistence farming; the limited application of modern technology; a weak knowledge base; poor production and market support infrastructure; incomplete and inadequate inputs in product markets; and weak backward and forward linkages between agriculture and other sectors.  Farming was only one vital part of the full agro-industrial system and growth was necessary across all parts of the value chain, from the field to the market.  Regional integration would also provide critical opportunities for growth.

Ms. EILITTA stressed the imperative of intensifying agricultural production, noting that, in the last decade, yields had changed very little, even as the area under production had increased -- a situation that had caused many dire environmental effects, including widespread depletion of soil nutrients.  Ultimately, intensification would be good for both the farmer and the environment.

Raising the efficiency of nutrients was as important as increasing the amounts used, she said.  Not only were current fertilizer costs quite high -- which prevented small farmers with very little purchasing power from acquiring them in sufficient quantities -- but 60 to 70 per cent of nitrogen-based fertilizers were typically lost to the environment.  Low-cost, more effective alternatives, such as slow-release fertilizers and techniques for “urea deep placement” technologies, were available and should be used.  In addition, Africa’s farmers should focus as much on national and regional markets as international ones in order to spur market development on the continent.  That approach would foster collaboration among actors at all levels of the value chain, strengthening them in ways that a focus on international markets did not.

When the floor was opened, speakers expressed concern about the challenges facing Africa in its quest for sustainable economic growth, citing as particularly distressing the continent’s vulnerability to environmental changes, insufficient infrastructure, which was crippling efforts to foster economic growth, and the low productivity of its agricultural sector.

Several speakers pointed to the impact of the current food crisis across the continent, pointing out that the escalating prices were increasing malnutrition and poverty, which, as noted in the Secretary-General’s report, was the chief challenge to further sustainable development in Africa.  In light of that, the international community should consider bold measures to guarantee affordable food for the poor in the short-term and target long-term support towards supporting a “green revolution” across the continent, many speakers said.

A number of calls were made for a more favourable trade environment that would grant African agricultural products access to international markets.  Appeals were also made for increased technology transfer, foreign direct investment and official development assistance.  As one speaker pointed out, given that “Africa produces what it does not consume and consumes what it does not produce”, there was a need to develop the continent’s domestic markets.

Acknowledging that the primary responsibility for development rested with the continent itself, a number of speakers pointed to the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) as the premier development mechanism for achieving sustainable development, including by increasing industrial productivity, competitiveness and diversity, access to modern energy services and transportation systems, and human-resources development.

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For information media • not an official record