Thursday, May 15, 2008

Like a Broken Record

By: Neth Dano, Third World Network

31 pages in all - complete with an outline of the structure on front page. Commendable collective effort on the part of the Chairman, his Bureau and the CSD Secretariat in summarizing the discussions from the various sessions on the themes under the current cluster. But, was it worth the wait?

As we expected, the obstacles and constraints in each of the highly interconnected and closely intertwined themes showed up again and again, coming out like a broken record. That is what you get for looking at each theme separately, and remind yourself later that they should be treated as whole.

Except for climate change and the looming global food crisis, nothing really new, but the same old perennial problems in Agriculture, Rural Development, Land, Desertification, Drought and Africa are hounding the Delegates and the UN more loudly now than ever. Lack of financial resources, land, technologies and infrastructures. Low priority for investments on agricultural research and development. Training and education. Trade imbalances and unfair trade policies. Environmental degradation. Poverty and hunger. Lack of participation of farmers and women.

The document contains most of the key issues, obstacles and constraints, and lessons learned – in as general terms as we can possibly think of. While the Chairman reminds us that his Summary is a “non-consensus” document, it has sadly de-fanged the strongest of statements delivered by some delegates and ended up with the usual least common denominators, a trademark of UN documents. The passion in some statements on the gravity of the situation that the Agriculture cluster is facing worldwide, especially in the face of the global food price crisis, has been lost, sucked up in the abyss of 244 paragraphs that make up the Chairman’s Summary.

The underlying causes of the constraints and obstacles faced by countries in the Agriculture cluster were presented very lamely in the document. Lack of financial resources and investments in agriculture did not go deeper into the misallocation of funds, lack of political will, bad governance and the global financial crisis, as pointed out by some developing countries. Lack of political will, articulated by some delegates and Major Group representatives as well as panel presenters, is sorely absent (perhaps hiding behind more passive concepts like good governance?). The implications of HIV/AIDS on agriculture and rural development was overlooked. The basic principles of Rio, such as the precautionary principle, that some delegates reminded us about in technological solutions to problems in agriculture, is nowhere to be found. Some observers noted that there was in fact a backsliding in the language on changing unsustainable patterns of production and consumption that was long agreed in Agenda 21.

The effort to capture the breadth of the discussions, while commendable, has drowned the urgency in recognizing and responding to the key obstacles and constraints that confront the Agriculture cluster. The jungle of views, including clashing ones, brought into the table could be quite disorienting for newcomers and outsiders to the CSD process. Highlighting the key obstacles and constraints to capture the sense of urgency placed on them by delegates, could perhaps help emphasize the points that need urgent actions and responses.

The non-consensus nature of the Chair’s Summary is not an excuse for losing the sense of urgency in the messages delivered on the floor. More than just an attempt to make every government happy with least-common-denominators and general formulation of the realities, the document should clearly and effectively identify the real roadblocks to sustainable development in the Agriculture cluster in order for CSD-17 to come up with sensible and concrete policy options to address the problems. As it is, it will take some efforts to do that with the current draft. At least there is something to start on.

If only each page of the document coming out of CSD-16 could have feed one person, we could have made 31 hungry people happy by now.