The team of Biovision’s Changing Course in Global Agriculture (CCGA), headed by President Hans Herren just had an incredibly busy day at the United Nations in Geneva. The CCGA program aims at a paradigm shift in global agricultural policies based on the 2008 IAASTD report and calling for a strengthening of smallholder farmers, respecting the natural boundaries set for agriculture and helping to truly fight poverty and hunger in the world.
We believe that the knowledge and possibilities to get to a sustainable development exist – what is missing is effective action. That’s why we brought together diplomats of the United States, Switzerland, Germany and Sweden and representatives of UN agencies and NGOs. For almost two hours different possibilities to finally start implementing measures of sustainable agriculture were put forth. Biovision and its partners presented several possible actions based on its position paper. Dr. Hans Herren stated that Rio+20 must put forth a mandate for a UN agency to work out a plan on how to implement the findings of the 2008 IAASTD report. This call for a mandate was welcomed by many panellists. At the same time Fritz Holzwarth of the German delegation asked to work out concrete action on the issues of land- and watergrab and to end the ongoing waste of food in the world.
Apart from the side-event Biovision was also directly involved in an official roundtable at the UN conference and held a media briefing on agriculture at Rio+20 in the morning.