This week marks the 33rd year of World Food Day observations, which also celebrates the 68th anniversary of the UN Food and Agriculture’s (FAO) founding. Over this time, both have served to build awareness around hunger and malnutrition, and tried to alleviate those strains on society. As one of the most recent frameworks for this – Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 1: alleviate extreme poverty and hunger – approaches its end in 2015, heightened conversation among development communities has focused on ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ of which agriculture and food systems play a very central role.
Photo by Giles San Martin on Flickr.
A new report by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Solutions for Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems, raises a set of challenging questions particularly targeted at a sustainable development path for food and agriculture in this post-MDG world. For developing and achieving Sustainable Development Goals after 2015, the authors call for a transformative and integrated approach that links agriculture, poverty, and nutrition, and acknowledges the incredible diversity of crops, livestock, climates, soils, tools, and technologies within agricultural systems. This is not simply arguing for transformation at the farm or community level, but rather a redesign of international and national structures that allow for sharing information and collaboratively developing solutions.
In fact, the report stresses that these SDGs should more explicitly address sustainable landscape management as a goal, and develop targets and indicators that focus holistically on livelihood provision, ecosystem services, products, and resource efficiency as key landscape dimensions.
Peta Jones
October 15, 2013 at 8:34amI’ve been collecting definitions, and this latest one is worth having a look at:
From: C. Macaskill (ed), 2013. The Agri Handbook for South Africa, 2013/14. Pretoria, South Africa: Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries/Rainbow SA Publishing
p.325
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5. Some notes on sustainability
A sustainable community ideally does not depend on externalities for its functioning and survival. It would incorporate the following:
It is economically viable / has an economic base / has an economic reason for being (raison d’etre). Every location / site / social group has something which makes it unique. Its uniqueness becomes its reason for existence, its magnet for attracting investment / for creating a market. New and existing communities should have some primary activity in its economic make-up. This is important for the creation of a diverse local economy. In urban areas, suburbs should be transformed into an economy which is not dependent on the CBD or commercial/industrial areas for survival. Towns should not depend on cities for their survival.
It does not export waste. Limit the waste flow. Keep the biological and technological waste streams separate and upcycle it (where waste is used as resource for the next step in the community’s metabolism). This approach follows nature’s dictum of waste is food: it eliminates pollution. Create jobs from the waste!
It does not import resources. Resources are seen as: material, energy, labour, knowledge, capital and wisdom. Anything local which can be used as catalyst / multiplier for the local economy should be developed, and regarded as a resource.
It maintains and fosters diversity. Biological, social and economic. The
degradation of natural systems is taboo i over-harvesting, loss of biodiversity, monocultures, etc). Diversity is nature’s design framework.
It grows social capital. Fosters conditions for society to thrive and
enhances its capacity to meet its needs:
• Level I: Natural systems are not damaged. To do so will undermine and limit that community – sooner or later.
• Level 2: This relates to conditions at the social system level: a decision made elsewhere might result in people not having access to resources, or to education. Any power that does not recognise interdependence is not sustainable.
• Level 3: Successful strategies for social sustainability: participation, transparency, responsibility / accountability, honesty.
Local knowledge, wisdom, culture are nurtured, tapped; this is reflected in decisions made at this level. Social and ecological implications are linked.
It governs itself. The smaller and more local the government, the more participation there is – and the more legitimate, accountable and effective it becomes.
It is designed with the intention to facilitate all of the above. Design does not stop at the house, street, landscaping, cadastral subdivisions or planning regulations. It asks questions about what waste is produced, where it goes and how it is managed. It asks questions about how the community is managed and how it earns its keep. It asks questions about how the habitat is enriched by the resident community. In short, the designers (for there are many) must create frameworks which nurture communities and their habitats – not to limit or constrain through regulations, for regulation is a signal of design failure.
Adapted from Louw van Biljon’s “Sustainable Development Manifesto”(January 2006) in which he acknowledges two crucial books as sources: Cook, David. 2004. The Natural Step. Towards a sustainable society. Schumocher briefing No. 11. Green Books, Totnes, Devon. – McDonough, William & Braungort, Michael. 2002. Cradle to Cradle. North Point Press, New York.
Van Biljon can be contacted at Tel: 058 256 1195/082 777 2647
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Landscape dirt
October 14, 2013 at 11:23amAnd it lands on Columbus Day, too 🙂 So much improvement has been made with regards to hunger in the past few decades, and there is still work to be done. Sustainability will only become more important in the years to come, especially in connection with alleviating poverty and enabling third world communities to thrive. The collaborative approach the report you linked suggests is interesting and important as a key to conquering hunger, I would say. Looking forward to watching sustainable landscape management become a larger part of the solutions to poverty and hunger worldwide.
joyohana
October 14, 2013 at 6:23amWe support the context of the approach and the development of a model to transparently show and that is capable of testing the design of the systems and their execution. We are developing a new approach to the education of all primary school aged children to ensure the concepts behind the model. This will ensure inter generation continuity and that the young can and will accept accountability and responsibility and demonstrate leadership.