Reducing world hunger and poverty must be tackled in a way that conserves the planet's fragile natural resource base, writes Ian Johnson
At the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg earlier this year, the international community renewed its commitment to reducing hunger and poverty.
Governments, civil society organisations, and the private sector agreed on the need for a more responsible approach to growth, characterised by social equity and conservation of the environment. The starting point for most poor countries must be rural development and growth in agricultural production.
Agriculture is central to rural life, and hence to sustainable development and responsible wealth creation. In the coming decades, we will need to increase production of crops, livestock, fish, forests, and commodities while protecting natural resources, improving rural livelihoods, and promoting broad-based growth. The task is daunting: we must feed a rapidly growing population, protect the environment, and promote social equity in a future that will little resemble the present. By 2050, the world's population - currently at six billion - will have grown by another three billion people. Our planet will be warmer, and floods and droughts will be more frequent and more severe.
We will need to produce more with less - less water in many areas, and less labour where HIV/AIDS and endemic disease abound.
Meeting these challenges will require scientific advances across a broad range of agricultural endeavours, generating information that decision-makers - including those in the World Bank - need in order to combat poverty more effectively. Agricultural practices we take for granted today came about through public investment that led to mechanised farming, improved crop varieties and management practices, and improved plant nutrient and crop protection technologies. These advances increased food supplies and raised incomes. During the Green Revolution, wheat yields in India quadrupled and rice yields in Indonesia tripled. Many farmers benefited, but not all, and Africa was largely bypassed.
The advances we will need to achieve in the coming years will likewise require the support of public investment in agricultural R&D. Yet, in the last few decades, agricultural science and technology has all but dropped from the public agenda. Today, the rate of growth in public investment is declining; and while private-sector investments are increasing, the research they support focuses primarily on commodities produced for OECD markets.
Research and the money to support it are both critical; also critical is public policy. Public investment in agricultural R&D will come about only when policy-makers have the information they need to understand the challenges ahead and the most promising options for meeting them.
Given the time required to translate laboratory research into field applications, we must put agricultural science and technology back on the public agenda now so that we can begin the work of generating the type and quality of information needed for effective policy-making. Generating this information, and ensuring its quality, will require the joint efforts of governments, industry, the scientific community, and civil society the world over.
Global assessments that bring all of these entities together can help focus the public and policy-makers on strategies for the future. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, perhaps the most renowned assessment, got most of the world's scientists and nearly all of the world's governments to agree on the nature and scope of climate change.
What is needed now is a global assessment that puts agriculture firmly back on the public agenda and evaluates the economic, environmental, and social implications of all technological and policy options - from intensification, organic production, and biotechnology, to waste minimisation and more efficient use of natural resources.
On Thursday and Friday this week, leaders from civil society, governments, the private sector, and the scientific community from rich and poor countries will gather in Dublin for a meeting hosted by the Department of Agriculture and Food. This is the first meeting of a nine-month global consultative process convened by the World Bank and aimed at bringing together stakeholders with disparate views to work jointly to identify the kinds of questions decision-makers need answered. These questions will form the underpinnings of an international assessment on the role of agricultural science and technology in reducing hunger and improving rural livelihoods.
Our goal is to reduce poverty and hunger in a way that actively conserves our planet's fragile natural resource base. An international assessment on agriculture that is transparent, inclusive, and devoid of political influence will bring us closer to this goal.
- Ian Johnson is World Bank vice-president for sustainable development