| COAG/01/7
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| COAG/01/7
|
COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE |
Sixteenth Session |
Rome, 26-30 March 2001, Red Room |
THE PLACE OF AGRICULTURE IN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: THE WAY FORWARD ON SARD |
Item 7 of the Provisional Agenda |
II. THE EVOLVING CONTEXT FOR AGRICULTURE
III. THE EVOLUTION OF SARD SINCE RIO
IV. MOVING AHEAD WITH SARD: THE KEY AREAS FOR ACTION
1. The concept of Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development (SARD) was one of a number of concepts that crystallised during the 1980s in response to the growing realisation that national and international agricultural policies and programmes should encompass a wider range of economic, environmental and socio-cultural issues than just the traditional areas of agricultural productivity, production and food security. The importance of the SARD concept was recognised and confirmed at the Rio Earth Summit (UNCED) in 1992, with chapter 141 of Agenda 21 setting out the programmes and specific actions needed to promote sustainable agriculture and rural development, and Member Nations committing themselves to these programmes and actions.
2. There have been some encouraging developments since the Rio Summit, with a number of valuable new approaches and policies growing out of the emphasis on sustainability. Many farmers and other rural actors have found local solutions to the challenges of sustainable production and environment protection, with significant benefits to forests, wildlife, water and soils - the negative effects of agriculture have been limited while production has been maintained or increased. The emphasis on sustainability has had environmental and social benefits in areas such as land resource planning, education for agriculture, and integrated pest management. There is growing realisation that there is no single solution to achieving SARD and that income generation off the farm importantly contributes to enhancing the quality of rural life. The emphasis on sustainability has also strongly influenced the development of inter-governmental mechanisms relating, for example, to biosafety and biodiversity.
3. However, not enough is being achieved. Serious food insecurity persists in many parts of the world, particularly in food-deficit, low-income countries and among poor and marginalised groups of people. Although more food is being produced worldwide than ever before, some 800 million people are still chronically malnourished and an estimated 2 000 million still suffer from various nutrient-deficiency diseases. Rural poverty and food insecurity remain two sides of the same coin. There have been fundamental changes in agriculture, including the composition and roles of rural communities, the relative importance of agricultural production in overall economies, and the role of government in technological change and management. However, despite the latter observation, getting the public policies "right" -given new kinds of partnerships, ownership and agreements with non-governmental, community/local and private actors- is critical. States still have the major role to play here, and must still represent the general interests of all citizens, in particular the interests of vulnerable groups and marginal areas that do not have alternatives to pro-active public governance decision-making and action. In countries with a narrow natural resources base and small economies such as Small Island Developing States (SIDS), food security is closely linked with improvements in trade, diversified agricultural production, and natural resources management. Hence, focusing on the specific problems of agriculture has a key role to play in achieving sustainable food security. Agricultural production and its associated industries will remain fundamental not only for global food security but also for the livelihoods of hundreds of millions well into the 21st Century.
4. Despite growing public concern, serious environmental degradation, caused in part by agricultural activities, continues in many areas. Many environmental objectives are not being met and many countries, developed and developing, are unable or unwilling to integrate environmental requirements into agricultural and rural development policies. Adjustments to such policies made, since Rio, still owe more to domestic political and budgetary pressures and international trade negotiations than to a concerted and coherent effort to ensure sustainability. One reason for this is that international discussions of SARD have concentrated on environmental issues, with ministries of agriculture often not fully engaged. Agriculture has generally been seen as a significant part of the problem, with little realisation that good agricultural practices are also part of the solutions. Effective mechanisms to exploit synergies between government and civil society have seldom been found, especially at the national level. Another fundamental problem is that SARD has generally been thought of as a programme in its own right, rather than sustainability being a concept that should overlay all thinking about agriculture and rural development to ensure an optimal balance between the need to improve agricultural productivity and economic, environmental and social imperatives.
5. Preparations for the next World Summit on Sustainable Development (Rio+10) offer an opportunity to learn from the experience of the past decade, review progress in the light of today's problems, and identify areas where achieving sustainability is vitally important. A start was made at the Eighth Session of the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD-8) in New York on 24 April - 5 May 2000. CSD-8 examined agriculture as an economic sector, highlighting the linkages between economic, social and environmental objectives within the broad perspective of sustainable development.
6. The CSD urged all governments to reaffirm their individual and collective commitments to achieving food security and reducing the number of undernourished people, by at least, one half by 2015, as agreed by the World Food Summit. Estimates of the numbers of undernourished people suggest that meeting this target will require a radical shift in priorities towards alleviating poverty and social exclusion. The CSD therefore urged FAO and other relevant international organizations, particularly the World Bank and the IMF, to assist countries in developing concrete policies and actions for implementing the Agenda 21 programmes on sustainable production and farming methods, including organic agriculture, and achieving the goals of the World Food Summit and SARD. The CSD underscored the need for:
7. An analysis of the new ideas and perspectives that have emerged since Rio has led to the identification of three key strategic areas where national governments can and should choose actions to ensure that their agricultural and rural development policies take proper account of the need for sustainability: (i) capacity building, including institutional support; (ii) mobilising and directing financial resources for investment in rural economies; (iii) technologies and policies for enhancing agricultural productivity and managing the natural environment. A common theme for these three areas is the need for collaboration between governments, the private sector and civil society organizations (CSOs).
8. FAO has a key role as the UNCED Task Manager appointed by the Inter-agency Committee on Sustainable Development to promote and report on progress related to chapter 14 of Agenda 21. Its own programme of work, in line with the Strategic Framework for FAO 2000 - 2015, also addresses the issues of sustainability in agriculture and rural development. FAO's role is to assist and work with Member Nations and their development partners to find solutions to problems, and to promote innovation at the farm and rural community level.
9. This paper:
The paper also flags the potential of using the elements of the FAO's 15-year Strategic Framework, which was shaped with major guidance from Member Nations, as one element to guide national planning on SARD.
10. While SARD remains a valid development paradigm, it is now ten years since the concept was articulated: the global, regional and country contexts have evolved, new ideas and perspectives have emerged, experience gained and lessons learnt. The socio-economic shift of emphasis to urban-based development, the explosive growth of communication industries and rising expectations of people wherever they are located, means that agriculture needs to be promoted and enabled as a viable source of rural livelihoods, in harmony with the environment and allowing a reasonable quality of family life.
11. A key feature of agriculture, which often provides the engine for driving the initial stages of economic and social development, is its enormous potential for increasing productivity. But many agricultural people are trapped within their rural settings. Productivity can only improve with the introduction of updated technologies, including the use of machines, improved plant and animal stock or varieties, better crop and post-harvest care and, importantly, higher investment and access to water. This will not come from subsistence-level production. Expressions of 'farming being a traditional way of life', or 'small-scale agriculture providing the backbone of society', in both developed and developing country contexts, are part of a rural nostalgic atavism which is out of step with reality. The reality is that the great majority of small scale farming families simply would like to increase incomes and diversify their sources of income, thereby improving their welfare while retaining distinct social and cultural identities.
12. As agriculture becomes more productive, its share of the working population can rapidly decline, freeing labour for other, more economically rewarding activities. Further economic benefits can result from agricultural specialisation (depending on the national endowment of natural resources, including climate). This, combined with trade and technological developments, can lower the cost of trading and permit an agricultural surplus to be exported.
13. The perceptions and issues related to agriculture and rural societies are changing as a result of a range of new and sometimes contentious developments, including globalisation, increasing environmental concerns, changes in governance, population dynamics and a number of socio-economic changes. A key problem is the diversity of these new developments and the accelerating pace with which they are arising. This may not allow time for the economically weakest to adjust and so may discriminate against them. However, just as the 'old' context for agriculture and rural societies provided opportunities for development as well as numerous challenges for governments, the 'new' context provides a rich set of opportunities even if the problem of ensuring equitable and sustainable development remains as difficult as ever.
14. Globalisation. This widely-used term has come to be associated with several developments: the liberalisation of trade, the increased freedom and speed of capital movements, the speedier transfer of technological information, and the increasing magnitude of the influence over markets of private-sector transnational corporations. Some of these issues have been with us for many years. What is new is the rapid pace of change affecting all of them together, coupled with the recent revolution in communication technology and the degree of influence of declining numbers of private sector actors. Globalisation offers enormous potential for accelerating development but its benefits may easily bypass those who are largely marginalised, outside or only tenuously linked to the modern economy. For example, enhanced communication benefits the wealthy but the poor remain ill-informed and frustrated. 'Trickle down' of benefits may not work at all, and rising competition in markets or lack of access to resources to seize opportunities may well frustrate aspirations aroused by knowledge that living standards elsewhere are higher. Globalisation, with its emphasis on the exchange, generally through markets, of goods, services and information, brings to the fore the costs of trading and of making transactions; this in turn places a renewed emphasis on investment in public goods such as communications infrastructure and education which can reduce such costs. The increasing interdependence of economies and countries - global integration - makes the avoidance of negative impacts such as environmental degradation even more urgent. This is important because it underlines the increasingly strong links between domestic policies relating to food, agriculture, the rural economy and the natural environment and international relations.
15. Governance. The profile of government in many countries has been reduced, through combinations of economic necessity, the near complete demise of centralised planning and transfers of authority from national administrations to non-governmental spheres. There is a corresponding widespread perception (which may not always be correct) of a greater transparency and accountability of governance and devolution of power and decision-making, leading to 'empowerment' of the stakeholders in agricultural and rural development. As the roles of central governments have been redefined, reducing their direct intervention in economic activity and service provision , private sector and civil society actors have moved into the gap, to various degrees and with varying levels of success. There have been losses and gains: there is wider involvement of society in decision-making and greater opportunity for consensus-building, but the profiles of investment and expenditure have not always been beneficial to the rural population. There is nevertheless a renewed recognition of the need to maintain a level of a national, public presence for general investment and services. For example, the quality and sustainability of agricultural research, extension and veterinary services can improve as a result of new types of partnership between government, private sector and non-profit organizations that combine accountability, fundability, innovation and accessibility.
16. Financial mechanisms and resources. One relatively recent change has been a significant reduction in the flow of development assistance, which has traditionally been from bi- or multi-lateral donors to central governments. This has had mainly geopolitical causes, and has contributed to the declining role of the public sector in development. Official commitments to agriculture (OCA) (in terms of constant 1990 $) have fallen from $12.2 billion in 1992, the year of UNCED, to $10.5-11 billion in 1995-6. Some of this decline may have been offset by official funds being reallocated to various Civil Society Organisations (CSOs). It seems unlikely that flows of OCA will return to the levels of the early 1990s although that could be achieved, as the world becomes wealthier, by devoting even a smaller share of donor countries' national income to OCA. Private foreign direct investment (FDI), of which only a negligible share goes to agriculture, now greatly exceeds official flows and has benefited from globalisation. However, FDI continues to go mainly to a few more developed developing countries; this is not unexpected, since FDI will naturally only follow political or economic security. However, exciting opportunities to mobilise new sources of external financing are emerging. For example, carbon trading arising through the future application of the Kyoto Protocol3 to the Framework Convention on Climate Change could generate funding for forms of crop and soil management that promote carbon sequestration, for example by enhancing the accumulation of soil organic matter. Ministries responsible for agriculture, environment and finance need to explore such options and opportunities (see also the paper on climate change - COAG/01/5).
17. Population dynamics. Population growth is an important driving force for agricultural and rural development, which in turn affects the pace of rural-urban and rural-rural migration. Agriculture and rural societies in the next few decades will have to contend with the impacts of changes in population dynamics: the slowing in population growth rates - or even declines in some countries, leading to ageing of societies, and the continuing rapid growth of urbanisation in most developing countries. Again there are opportunities and challenges. For example, as a population begins to age, its population profile, with a relatively high proportion of people of working age, may aid development. Urbanisation can create a market for food and non-food products, an engine for rural development that is often lacking. The challenge is to harness these potentially beneficial forces in a SARD framework.
18. Socio-economic change. Rising incomes and increased urbanisation result in changing food consumption patterns and hence food production systems. This will impact particularly on the livestock sector, as well as on cereals as input to animal feed. Livestock development to meet the rising demand will have to be carefully managed to ensure that the social and environmental consequences are in line with SARD philosophy. The main impact of the changing economic environment on rural society, however, is the growth of non-agricultural and post-primary agricultural activities and the resulting increases in income. About half of the world's population is now urbanised and industrialised. As development proceeds, rural incomes are determined less and less by primary agriculture and more and more by a combination of agricultural production and the processing and marketing of that production, together with the employment of rural people in non-agricultural industrial and service sectors. This means that promoting SARD must be an integrated effort encompassing agriculture and small-scale industries and the services they demand. The establishment of very land-intensive, specialised livestock production units, especially for poultry and pork, could offer opportunities for land-poor, but trained, farmers. Many of these units are likely to be located in peri-urban areas, demanding particular attention to land-use planning and waste management.
19. The major changes in the external contexts for SARD since Rio have been accompanied by evolution of the concept itself in the light of the experience gained since it was launched and new perceptions of the process of development - even in the industrialised economies. Such evolution has to be taken in account in formulating and negotiating SARD-related strategies in various national and international fora.
20. There is a growing appreciation that agricultural activities can have positive as well as negative impacts: they can protect as well as damage the environment, create a harmonious landscape as well as degrade or destroy a natural wilderness, and shape rural societies and their cultures in positive as well as negative ways. For example, integrated pest management (IPM) techniques can result in increased yields with less environmental damage, less risk to health and lower production costs. Reduced tillage and agroforestry activities can stabilise yields and can pull CO2 out of the atmosphere to reduce greenhouse gas effects. SARD, as articulated in Agenda 21, mentions such positive effects but is more directly concerned with reducing possible negative impacts such as environmental degradation in ways that still permit increases in production. Putting across the message that implementing SARD on a wide scale can benefit all, but in different ways, is an important political challenge at the national level requiring consensus among diverse government bodies to harmonise policies and action programmes.
21. There have been other important changes in perception regarding the practical interpretation of SARD. The first is that the concept must extend to social, institutional and economic sustainability and not exclusively environmental sustainability - the conservation and rational utilisation of natural resources. Those now working on SARD understand that sustainability means that management practices must be profitable and socially and culturally suitable, and must satisfy local requirements such as property rights over natural resources. The second is a new focus on development as a process which must allow for calculated trade-offs between reductions in the stock of natural capital (forests, unexploited freshwater, etc.) and the generation of resources for investment in human and social capital (healthier and better educated people, technical knowledge and infrastructure). These shifts in perception increase the challenge of implementing SARD, but also open up opportunities for doing so.
22. Finally, experience has shown that there is no single blueprint for implementing SARD. It requires a series of methodical steps, primarily by national governments, to identify key actions with clear, strategic objectives. Throughout, there must be as full as possible an understanding of the implications of the choices made, for the stakeholders, for their environment and for production goals. Such understanding would ideally be based on a dialogue with the stakeholders, a socio-economic assessment of their livelihood systems, and surveys of their natural and man-made environments. In practice, recourse will have to be made to rapid surveys and approximations but the intent and purpose should remain. Exchange of information and knowledge, enhanced remarkably by modern technologies, will bring a new level of rapid, global impact to innovations in SARD.
23. For many developing countries, national objectives are to reduce rural poverty and hunger without damaging the environment, and to focus on the maintenance of key ecosystems. For developed countries, the agenda is likely to be quite different. In these, governments seek how best to support their rural communities and other actors in their continuing contributions to national objectives relating to food security, social cohesion and the maintenance of landscapes. This is to be addressed in efficient and environmentally conscious ways without producing untradable surpluses of agricultural products. There is also a growing appreciation that ensuring the viability of rural livelihoods and communities is fundamental to sustainability in agriculture.
24. We have identified three key areas for action for a SARD-sensitive strategy in a wide variety of national contexts. COAG members may wish to comment on these actions, drawing on their own experience and objectives. They are:
Of course, in launching these actions one is not starting with a clean slate. Far-reaching decisions will have been taken and these will have become embedded in the domestic body-politic. Regional and global commitments will have been negotiated and agreed. There may therefore be limited room for manoeuvre. But these considerations should not preclude an in-depth appraisal of where a country stands on implementing SARD and what needs to be done next, while recalling its World Food Summit commitment to a significant reduction of hunger.
25. An important innovation in the concept of SARD was its people-focussed approach. It is people who, through their survival and livelihood strategies, may degrade and even ultimately destroy their environment or, conversely, protect and even improve it. The corner stone of a SARD-focussed development strategy is therefore capacity building. This can include enabling people to understand and manage their environment, be in control of their own destiny, and support or create the institutions that can guide, inform and empower them in this endeavour. Capacity building must at all levels of society, be based on education. Access to basic education, including literacy and life skills, is vital for the whole rural population but particularly for poor and marginalised groups, including women and youth. A wide range of skills is needed to address the challenge of implementing SARD. 'New' skills include combinations of technical, environmental and economic knowledge that enable environmental impacts to be taken into account in policy making and land-use planning and management.
26. Capacity building needs access to information, sharing of experience and dialogue. Much information is unavailable or inaccessible, particularly to poor farmers, many practical lessons have been learnt but not shared, and there are few opportunities for dialogue to enable concerns to be resolved. Modern technologies such as the Internet offer exciting opportunities for isolated rural communities to access and exchange information. But exploiting these would require a reduction in costs, a reliable electricity supply (which would also bring wider welfare benefits) and a willingness on the part of governments to accept the quantum leap in democratisation that such a broadening of access to and sharing of information may represent.
27. Building capacities is of little use if there are no effective institutions to enable such capacities to be exploited. Government and public agencies world-wide have progressively entered into new kinds of partnership with civil society and the private sector over the past decade. The rapid growth of NGOs, farmer and farm worker federations and forms of community-based association that include a range of local actors demonstrates the breadth of these changes. Such organizations can play a crucial catalytic and leadership role. However, the institutional, administrative and legislative dimensions of these new partnerships need to be reinforced. NGOs and farmers' groups need the legal instruments and management tools to act independently, enter into contracts, exercise financial autonomy and maintain transparency in governance. Government agencies often have to enter into new collaborative agreements with other branches of government, as well as with civil society and the private sector. Institutions may need to be strengthened to ensure an optimal structure of land ownership and property rights for achieving the strategic roles of agriculture - private or public ownership of land, large or small-scale holdings, tenancies or leases, or mixes of these.
28. Promoting SARD and building capacities needs investment from public and private sources. Public sector funding, from domestic and external aid sources, is scarce and may not be available even for the most desirable investments. Also, decentralisation of decision-making, including on resource allocation, may make centralised investment planning impracticable. What is needed is an investment strategy plan or guideline that obtain maximum leverage from directing limited government resources toward public goods such as transportation infrastructure that can unleash private investment inflows in better connected areas. Policies are needed that create the sound economic conditions making investments attractive. There may also be new opportunities and mechanisms, such as GEF and carbon trading, to provide finance for public sector investment in SARD-related activities.
29. Attracting additional FDI flows for investing in SARD requires creating conditions for viable projects to emerge, not an easy task. Simply allowing farming to be more profitable by modifying past pro-urban trade and public investment policies would be a useful step. Establishing new alliances and partnerships between governments, business and civil society, facilitated by greater global integration, could lead to a redefinition of the traditional roles of external finance and technical assistance, including incentives such as compensatory payments, and help to draw in the private sector. Private-public partnerships could ensure increased funding for agricultural technology development.
30. There is an unexploited opportunity to mobilise domestic rural savings for investing in SARD. Doing this will probably require wide-ranging policy reform to mobilise savings and make rural investment more profitable and secure for (local savers). FAO will work in close partnership with international and regional financial institutions and relevant bilateral agencies in this effort.
31. Investment in agriculture and rural development is often not of first priority to governments, and thus declining ODA is mostly funnelled to other economic sectors. governments concerned with rural poverty and lagging agricultural growth may wish to accordingly assess their priorities. Donors and Governments need to support this sector in most developing countries; FDI will generally follow productive opportunities, including in agriculture.
32. The technology needs of poor farmers - and hence the research effort to generate them - are large, but their effective demand for it is very low: they cannot pay much for it or for the associated inputs it may require such as water, fertilisers and additional labour. The private sector, which has by far the greatest resources to undertake this research, is unlikely to do so without robust intellectual property right protection through patents, licences, etc. The cost of these is likely to place them well beyond the reach of the poor. In this respect, technology development for poor farmers in low-income countries and its transfer to them takes on aspects of a global public good, justifying public funding. But the public funding of agricultural research in both developed and developing countries has fallen significantly during the past decade or so. There are 16 research centres of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) supported by an informal association of public and private members, devoted to supporting SARD and contributing to food security and poverty eradication. These centres have to cover the whole range of agricultural activities and their funding has occasionally been precarious. What is needed is expanded funding of public sector agricultural research and extension, aimed at poor farmers in many low-income countries, possibly with expanded partnerships between the public and private sectors. The potential research agenda is large; it includes inter alia the following major topics:
33. COAG members may wish to comment on the proposed key areas for action on SARD identified above, in view of their specific national situations and the changing contexts for arriving at sustainability.
34. The start of the 21st Century is marked by ever-increasing concerns about the environmental impacts of human activity and persisting tensions between the need to satisfy basic needs for food, shelter, clothing and a good overall quality of life, and the need to preserve precious physical and biological resources. FAO has a pivotal role to play in shifting the general perception of agriculture as a problem to an appreciation of the ways that agriculture and better use and management of rural areas can conserve and sustain plants, animals, land, waters and even the atmosphere.
35. As a neutral, technical agency of the United Nations, FAO is uniquely placed to continue to bring the global imperatives related to food and agriculture to the forefront of international attention through contacts with Member Nations, scientific bodies, and bodies or fora that involve civil society and the private sector. FAO's mandate is to orient policy and action on agriculture for future generations and catalyse thinking and action on challenges to production, distribution and delivery of food.
36. Addressing the sustainability of agriculture and rural development is not a single, discrete programme in FAO, but rather an approach that cuts across projects, disciplines and departments. FAO's work on SARD is mainly in promoting action to address food security, rural poverty alleviation, technologies for sustainable production, international and national regulatory frameworks, information access, decision support systems and emergency relief. FAO can help members in promoting the SARD approach, through drawing attention to key issues and facilitating information and knowledge sharing.
37. The cross-cutting character and complexity of the topic calls for an inter-disciplinary approach that mobilises all FAO departments. The expertise assembled in the Organization covers innovative forms of agricultural production and contemporary farming systems, rural institutions, natural resources management, legal and legislative frameworks and national agronomic policies. Specialist groups must capture the rapid changes in rural areas - their landscapes, communities and economies - world-wide. Working Groups on the environment and agriculture and the new Priority Areas for Inter-disciplinary Action (PAIAs) established to implement the FAO Strategic Framework constitute the basis for such collaboration.
38. Selecting the three key areas for action discussed above will also guide FAO in shaping its own programmes within its Medium Term Plan 2002-2007 (MTP) so that it can fulfil its role in implementing SARD, including its role as Task Manager. This role extends well beyond that of reporting regularly to the CSD and its related institutions, important though that is. It includes being a focal point for promoting SARD globally in cooperation with its international partners within the UN system, other intergovernmental organizations and Member Nations and civil societies. Fulfilling this role since UNCED has proved difficult given the squeeze on FAO's own resources, lack of financial commitment from the international community for the provision of financial assistance, and mixed national performance in implementation. At the national level, failure to achieve effective cooperation between relevant ministries and potential partners in civil society and the private sector has frequently been a particular stumbling block.
39. Therefore the Rio+10 review offers an opportunity for FAO's Member Nations to guide it in redefining its role in the context of SARD. The timing is particularly appropriate given that FAO's Strategic Framework 2000-2015, approved by Conference in November 1999, and the MTP outline many activities that support national efforts on SARD. COAG Members may also wish to reflect on the degree to which the five strategies of the Strategic Framework also provide a useful structure, among others, for national strategic planning, programme implementation, and eventually for assessing progress on SARD for the Rio+10 Summit in 2002 and beyond.
40. Greater capacity and stronger institutions are necessary to achieve SARD goals. Better information and knowledge systems are an important part of capacity building (see paragraph 26, above). For example modern web-page approaches offer new ways of organizing complex information, enabling a clear presentation of the large number of diverse SARD issues by setting out the range of options available to address each issue, and highlighting their implications. Assessing the implications, prioritising and taking full operational advantage of such information implies dynamic methods of decision-making that mobilise both inter- and extra-governmental partners. FAO is well placed to facilitate multi-stakeholder efforts to develop such a robust, interactive information and decision support system. The expanded work, however, would require human and financial resources for planning, coordination and development of a common platform.
41. COAG may wish to provide guidance to FAO on:
42. COAG members may wish to share examples of successful inter-ministerial and inter-agency cooperative planning and joint implementation related to SARD. Such examples and Members' insights into mechanisms to address constraints and build on opportunities for government and civil society collaboration would enrich COAG's debate on this topic and could stimulate innovation.
43. Finally, COAG may wish to monitor progress in implementing SARD by placing this topic as a standing item on the agenda every four years.
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1 Find original text at : http://www.igc.org/habitat/agenda21/ch-14.html .
2 As a start to the participatory process recommended by CSD-8, the outline of this paper, as well as the outline for the consolidated Task Manager Report (chapters 10,12 and 14) for CSD-10, were circulated to major groups for their comments.
