Tehran/Rome, 7 March 2002.? The UN
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) opens its 26th Regional
Conference for the Near East next Saturday at Azadi Grand Hotel
in Tehran. Agriculture, forestry and fisheries ministers and
experts from 29 countries will assess the current food and
agriculture situation in the Near East Region, review progress
achieved since the 1996 World Food Summit and address the themes
of the World Food Summit: five years later (WFS:fyl) scheduled
in Rome, Italy from 10 to 13 June 2002.
WFS:fyl was called to mobilize the political will and the
financial resources to fight hunger. World leaders will be asked
to outline the measures needed to achieve the goal of the first
World Food Summit and suggest how to accelerate the process. At
the World Food Summit in 1996, representatives of 185 nations
and the European Community pledged to work towards eradicating
hunger. As an essential first step, they set a target of
reducing the number of hungry people by half by 2015.
In Tehran, for five days, agriculture experts and
ministers from the Middle East and North-Africa will also
discuss long-term plans for drought mitigation and management,
opportunities for sustainable development and activities related
to the observance of the International Year of Mountains
Water scarcity is
the most serious challenge to agriculture throughout the Near
East; while the Region covers 14 percent of the world's
surface, its water resources are only about 2 percent of the
total internal renewable water resources of the world, according
to FAO. Moreover, some 70 percent of the agricultural areas in
the Region are arid or semi-arid and only 20 percent of the
total land is cultivable.
also examine the problem of low forest cover and other issues
such as trade liberalization policies, intra-regional trade,
livestock diseases and biodiversity for agriculture, forestry
and fisheries. In the Near East region, forests are
disappearing faster than in most parts of the world. This is
mainly due to the inability and failure of most national forest
and land use policies to effectively address competing demands
on forests and tree resources. The total forest area of Near
East countries accounts for 5.8 percent of the total land area,
according to FAO.
In 1999, the Islamic
Republic of Iran, with FAO's technical assistance, launched
the Tehran Process, an initiative to help developing countries
reverse the trend regarding their forest cover. More than 70
developing countries are affected by low forest cover, involving
300 to 400 million people, FAO experts say.
With regard to agricultural trade, a paper prepared by
FAO for the Tehran Conference underlines the "high
dependency" of the Region on food imports. For the Near
East region as a whole, imports of cereals, as a proportion of
the total annual consumption, expanded from 15 percent in
1970-75 to 33 percent in 1997-99. Many countries still import
more than 50 percent of their requirements of wheat and wheat
flour. Intra-regional agricultural trade has generally remained
low and stagnant, according to the report, which recommends
further technical support aimed at establishing a regional
network for agricultural policies.
paper prepared for the Conference underlines that the Near East
Region is unique from the standpoint of plant genetic resources.
"The diversity present in the Region is a source of
important traits to improve cultivated plants. However, most of
this diversity, some 10 percent of the flora, is threatened by
genetic erosion," warns the paper.