FAO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT DIMENSIONS
We are pleased to announce the latest update to 'Sustainable Development
Dimensions', the Internet information service of the Sustainable Development
Department (SD) of the Food and Agricultuyre Organization of the United
Nations (FAO).
Our URL is http://www.fao.org/waicent/faoinfo/sustdev/welcome_.htm.
The following is taken from our 'What's new' page
(http://www.fao.org/waicent/faoinfo/sustdev/whatsnew.htm), which contains
active hyperlinks to the new material.
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THREE BIG SPECIALS
* Five years after the 1992 Earth Summit, how far have we come in achieving
sustainable development? World heads of state will meet for a UN General
Assembly special session late in June to answer that question and negotiate
proposals for future action. For the occasion, we publish 'Earth Summit+5:
progress on the road from Rio', presenting FAO reports on progress in key
areas of Agenda 21, the Summit's programme of action.
* Our second big Special is 'Gender - the key to sustainability and food
security', describing the new 'gender approach' embodied in FAO's Plan of
Action for Women in Development. It outlines the conceptual framework for
analysing gender implications for sustainable development, and shows how
FAO is transforming these ideas into strategies and action in the areas of
natural resources, agricultural support systems, food and nutrition, and
improved policy-making and planning. Also available in French and Spanish.
* Since 1991, SD's Agricultural Education Group has carried out an
exhaustive review of the state of agricultural education and training in
developing countries. The results of two expert consultations, a survey of
educational institutions worldwide, and eight regional round tables are
presented in our third Special, 'Agricultural education and training: issues
and opportunities'. It makes extensive recommendations for adjusting
curricula and training methods to the new realities of rural society. The
report is also in published in French.
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DIMENSION: PEOPLE
In our 'People's Participation' section, we publish 'Participatory action
research and people's participation', an important study produced for FAO in
the early 1990s by Gerrit Huizer, from the Third World Centre at the
Netherlands' Catholic University of Nijmegen. From a review of FAO People's
Participation Programme projects in Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Thailand and
Zambia, Huizer concludes that 'participatory action research is a delicate
and in many countries very controversial affair - persons getting involved
should be highly familiar with the local intricacies of economic and
political power'. Users with fast lines can access the Full document (170K!)
- the less well connected should start with the Contents and preface. In
Analysis, there's an article by the University of Wisconsin's John Gastil
onProblems in small group decision making.
The 'Women and Population' section last month carried News about the
introduction of the FAO/ILO Socioeconomic and Gender Analysis (SEAGA)
Programme in francophone West Africa. This month's update includes a
briefing on SEAGA in French and English. In Resources, there's also a short
report on a Small animals project with women in Gambia. SD's Population
Service reports on a series of recent international meetings: the Arab
Regional Population Conference in Cairo, a Thematic workshop on adolescent
reproductive health, a UNFPA thematic workshop on indicators and a workshop
on Population characteristics in fishing communities that brought together
23 fisheries scientists, socio-economists and population experts from
Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, the Philippines and Senegal.
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DIMENSION: INSTITUTIONS
In the 'Land Tenure' Analysis section, there's a two-part article by Gabrio
Marinozzi on 'Agriculture periurbaine au Nicaragua' - after a brief review
of Nicaraguan politics from Somoza to neo-liberalism, it looks at the role
of peri-urban farming in meeting the needs of poor city dwellers in the
region of Ticauntepe. In another article, SD's Paolo Groppo reviews the
results of 'La reforma agraria en America Latina' and offers 'un marco de
referencia metodologico pragmatico, adaptado a las exigencias actuales'. We
post two new contributions to our Land Tenure Forum on 'Private and public
sector cooperation in national land tenure development in Eastern and
Central Europe' - Graham Lanphier and John Parker, of the Overseas Projects
Corporation of Victoria, Australia report on Outsourcing to the private
sector as a tool for effective land data administration, while Jerzy
Kozlowski describes Polish experience in creation of real property
registration system.
In our 'Rural Administration and Cooperatives' section there is News of a
recently completed FAO study on rural employment - or unemployment - in
Albania. The study found that 'subsistence production is now the major
socio-economic characteristic of the farm sector' and that off-farm
employment does exist - but mainly in the form of emigration to other
countries. We will publish extracts from the study in a future update.
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DIMENSION: ENVIRONMENT
China features strongly in this month's Environment update. In
'Environmental Policy, Planning and Management' News, we report on a new
study, by SD's Environment and Natural Resources Service and Chinese
experts, on the uncontrolled pollution and land degradation that have
accompanied the country's programme of intensive agriculture and rural job
creation (in Analysis, we publish the study's recommendations for
'Sustainable agriculture and rural development in China'). Also in the News:
the UN Sustainable Development Commission meeting in April, the upcoming
Conference of the Parties to the Convention to Combat Desertification, and a
new report onland quality indicators.
In 'Energy for Development', SD's Senior Energy Coordinator, Gustavo Best -
just back from Beijing - reviews China's future energy scenario in his
report on April's Asia Pacific forum on new energy technology. China is by
far the fastest growing energy market in the world, writes Best, and - while
coal will remain the prime energy source - Chinese scientists have made
great progress in renewable energy technologies. He saw some of those
technologies in development during his visit to the Energy demonstration
base at Shenyang Agricultural University. Moving the focus to Europe, we
publish two documents from a recent FAO workshop in Belgium on anaerobic
conversion for environmental protection, sanitation and re-use of residues:
the Conclusions and recommendations and the abstract of a paper on Anaerobic
digestion of agroindustrial byproducts and wastes (did you know that
agriculture in the European Union produces an estimated 1,100,000,000 tonnes
of organic wastes a year?)
Next update: 15 June 1997
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