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| Kathmandu, Wednesday May 08, 2002 Baishakh 25, 2059. |
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FAO
Regional Meet to be held in Nepal
Post Report
KATHMANDU, May 7: With
an objective of reviewing the state of agriculture and food security in the region, the
26th Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Regional Conference for Asia and the Pacific
would be held in Nepal from May 13 to 17.
The conference will
evaluate and analyse policies and practices put into place in the region for reducing
hunger and food insecurity and make necessary recommendations for reinvigorating those to
effectively reduce the hunger-stricken population.
Speaking at a
pre-conference press briefing held Tuesday, Ganesh Kumar KC, Joint Secretary at the
Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives (MoAC), informed that ministers, high-government
officials and representatives of all 40 regional countries would be gathering in the
capital for the conference.
The conference is the
final among a series of FAO biannual regional conferences in preparation for the World
Food Summit that is scheduled to take place in Rome from June 10 to 13, five years later.
The recommendations made by the conference would be voiced out in the summit.
Winston R Rudder, FAO
Representative to Nepal, speaking on the occasion said, "The FAO Regional Conference
in Nepal would take stock of progress in hunger reduction and make recommendations to
accelerate the fight against hunger and poverty."
As the conference
proceeds the World Food Summit: five years later, it has increased significance and more
so for the region considering the point that over 500 million hunger-stricken people
reside in the region, he stated. The world’s total hunger-stricken population is put
at 800 million.
Rudder added that the
conference would give impetus to generating global alliance against hunger, food
insecurity and poverty and is an opportunity to strengthen the political will to address
the problem, especially to ensure better financial flow in the agriculture sector in the
developed and developing countries.
"The conference
will thrash out the line as to how Asia and Pacific should perform when the World Food
Summit takes place the next month," he highlighted.
Regional dimensions,
sustainable mountain development, empowerment of rural poor, livestock and fisheries
development for household food and nutrition security and poverty reduction are the
agendas on which the conference would dwell upon, he informed.
Stating that the
government’s efforts alone was insufficient in yielding the desired result of
reducing the hungry population, he emphasised on better involvement of civil society
organisations and non-government organisations, among others.
To provide the inputs
in the process from civil societies’ side, a two-day regional conference of NGOs and
CSOs is also scheduled to take place from May 11, prior to the main conference.
The regional conference
is also being looked with importance, as it would thrash out the region’s line that
would be voiced out in the forthcoming World Food Summit. Its importance is further
heightened considering what has been achieved in the field of food security so far.
The FAO’s World
Food Summit held in Rome in 1996 had set a goal of reducing global hunger by half by the
year 2015. Going by the statistics, the goal was to reduce the global hunger by 20 million
annually. However, the achievement was much on a lower side, with the hunger reduction
rate standing at 6 million only.
While the goal set by
the summit was to reduce the hungry population in Asia and the Pacific by 12 million
annually, the achievement was 10 million per annum. The rate of hunger reduction is worse
in South Asia, as the rate of the same is 8 million per year against the target of
reducing the hungry population by 10 million annually.
The FAO’s records
state that Pakistan and Sri Lanka are performing better in terms of food security, while
the condition is reverse in case of Nepal and India, as the countries’ hungry
population was on the rise in recent times.
T C Ti, Conference
Secretary of the FAO, speaking at the meeting said that Nepal’s hungry population
increased to 5 million from 3.5 million in last seven years.
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