As presented in its contribution to the World Summit on Sustainable Development, FAO addresses the environmental challenges and trade-offs created by changes in agriculture, forestry and fisheries in its programmes and activities for Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development (SARD). The main goal is to eradicate hunger and poverty which are linked in a vicious cycle to unsustainable practices and environmental degradation. Desertification, soil fertility decline, deforestation, depletion of fish stocks and loss of biodiversity all have devastating consequences for the livelihoods of the world’s poor.
The Declaration of the World Food Summit: five years later underlines the contribution of sustainable management of natural resources to food security and poverty eradication. The same recognition can be found in the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) which highlights the environment as a priority area for policy reform and increased investment. Conservation and development of natural resources are also priority areas of the Anti-Hunger Programme which sets out key actions to be taken internationally and by countries themselves to achieve the World Food Summit target of halving the number of chronically undernourished by 2015.
This publication is part of FAO’s work for sustainable agricultural and rural development. In particular, it is part of its programmes of capacity building for local level governance and for supporting the application of a new development paradigm fostering the most sustainable use of natural resources at farm, community and ecosystem level. It originates from the capacity building experience of the Policy Assistance Division in many countries, where local government officials addressed the environment primarily in a regulatory role.
The text presents an overview of the concepts and definitions of environment and sustainable development, emphasizing the importance of environment and natural resources for the economies of developing countries. Its aim is to provide basic knowledge and analytical tools related to environment-economy interactions, how these should be taken into account in decision-making at the decentralized, or sub-national, level. It reviews the role of the government and the instruments at its disposal, in addition to regulatory instruments, to create a context in which environmental issues are analysed and addressed.
While the original target group for this publication are government officials working at sub-national level, the text is of interest to all those involved in development work in a decentralized context.
We hope that this publication, with its focus on economics and institutional analysis, will contribute to the holistic and interdisciplinary development planning practices required for sustainable development. Comments and feedback are very welcome.
Santiago Funes
Director
Policy Assistance Division
