In his attractiveness to G20 environment ministers, the Director-General of the UN Meals and Agriculture Group (FAO), Qu Dongyu, highlighted the problem of possessing to generate additional food items whilst reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
“Today, humanity faces a triple planetary disaster of biodiversity loss, local weather crisis and the effects of the pandemic”, he said. “To have nutritious food items, we need a healthy environment”.
Improved water
The FAO chief spoke of the need to address water scarcity, which has an effect on more than a billion individuals, by increasing performance and sustainable management.
Virtually a billion hectares of rain-fed cropland and pastureland are also seriously impacted by recurring drought.
Mr. Qu argued that h2o-similar difficulties could be addressed through digital innovation, far better oversight and investment decision.
He also identified as for stepping up biodiversity-friendly strategies, which includes additional investments in similar actions and slowing down biodiversity reduction.
“Current ranges of investment are really insufficient”, said the FAO Director-Normal.
$1.4 trillion benefit
He stressed that reversing deforestation “will assistance mitigate from climate change” and prevent disease outbreaks passing from animals to individuals, adding that the financial positive aspects of halting biodiversity loss and land degradation, could quantity to $1.4 trillion per yr.
The not long ago launched UN Ten years on Ecosystem Restoration, led by FAO and the UN Atmosphere Programme (UNEP), provides an “excellent prospect to mobilize our collective efforts”, he claimed.
FAO is calling for urgent action to reverse the alarming rate of biodiversity reduction, recommending scaled up mitigation approaches and actions across the meals and agricultural sectors.
Mr. Qu emphasized the UN agency’s work was guided by the require to make agri-food stuff systems more effective, resilient, inclusive and sustainable – all with the intention of achieving the so-named “four betters”: better production, nutrition, environment and life, leaving no 1 behind.
Extraordinary tech challenge
The Globe Food Forum (WFF) – created for and led by the Foods and Agriculture’s (FAO) Youth Committee – announced on Thursday the start of an international competition in partnership with the non-profit Extreme Tech Challenge (XTC) to assistance and showcase business people harnessing technology to generate the sustainable transformation of agri-food stuff units, to end world starvation.
The WFF Startup Innovation Awards will be presented on 2 October to the successful contestants who have built companies aligned to the “four betters”.
“The Extraordinary Tech Challenge AgTech, Meals & Drinking water competition group immediately addresses FAO’s mission to defeat hunger around the world and to realize high-high-quality food items safety for all”, said FAO Deputy Director-Basic, Beth Bechdol.
“We are thrilled to join XTC in this partnership and to leverage their extraordinary pool of transformative startups to make a content affect in each of our organizations’ sustained initiatives to deal with this world wide challenge”.
Food systems focus
In the meantime, the Foods Systems Pre-Summit is gearing to run from Monday to Wednesday subsequent 7 days, forward of the major Summit itself, owing to consider place later this calendar year.
Journalists who have however to sign up for next week’s virtual occasion, are being encouraged to do so listed here.
It’s staying convened as part of the Ten years of Motion to accomplish the Sustainable Progress Plans (SDGs) by 2030.
The goal of the high-level meeting is to bring collectively important players from the worlds of science, company, coverage, healthcare, academia and others to launch daring actions towards progress on all 17 SDGs – every single of which depends to some diploma on more healthy, additional sustainable and equitable foods programs.