Ensayo

SERIES HUMANITY AND BIOSPHERE

Agriculture and Sustainable Development

ALLIANCE FOR A RESPONSIBLE, PLURAL AND UNITED WORLD

www.alliance21.org

Proposal papers for the 21th century

The proposal papers are a collection of short books on each decisive area of our future, which assemble those proposals that appear the most capable of bringing about the changes and transformations neededfor the construction of a more just and sustainable 20th century. They aim to inspire debate over these issues at both local and global levels. The term ‘globalisation’ corresponds to major transformations that represent both opportunities for progress and risks of aggravating social disparities and ecological imbalances. It is important that those with political and economic power do not alonehave control over these transformations as, trapped within their own short-term logic, they can only lead us to a permanent global crisis, all too apparent since the September 11th attacks on the United States. This is why the Alliance for a Responsible, Plural and United World (see appendix) initiated, in 2000-2001, a process of assembling and pinpointing proposals from different movements andorganisations, different actors in society and regions around the world. This process began with electronic forums, followed by a series of international workshops and meetings, and resulted in some sixty proposal texts, presented at the World Citizen Assembly held in Lille (France) in December 2001. These texts, some of which have been completed and updated, are now in the process of being publishedby a network of associative and institutional publishers in 6 languages (English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Arabic and Chinese) in 7 countries (Peru, Brazil, Zimbabwe, France, Lebanon, India, China). These publishers work together in order to adapt the texts to their different cultural and geopolitical contexts. The aim is that the proposal papers stimulate the largest possible debate in eachof these regions of the world and that they reach their target publics whether they be decision-makers, journalists, young people or social movements.

2

Presentation of the Paper « Agriculture and Sustainable Development »

The origin of this proposal booklet was a first work taken on by Bill Vorley of the IIED in London, with a view to providing a work document on the stakes andbackground questions posed by the social, professional, political, economic and associative actors concerning the sustainable development of agriculture. The meeting in Lisbon in January 2001 “ for a transatlantic, multiple actor dialogue on sustainable agriculture ”, organised by the European partners on the environment (EPE), contributed to testing a certain number of points and proposals in thisdocument. On a geopolitical level, this first work was strongly based on the northern countries, the OECD and particularly the USA and the EU. The question of sustainable agriculture in the countries of the south was not dealt with in this first version, but it has not been entirely discarded. With respect to methodological questions concerning the choice of the problem, and particularly thearticulation between a strategy of sustainable development of agriculture throughout the world in a process of globalisation and liberalisation of world trade, we commenced with a certain number of questions in their current state concerning the countries of the north, in order to evaluate, for instance, the impact of the agricultural policies of developed countries on developing countries. Moreover, thegeneric, transversal nature of the notion of sustainable agriculture means we have to show caution in using the notion between different countries and different continents. In other words, all development strategies or policies may today be based on the objective of sustainability. However, there are many implications of this, such as questions of food sovereignty, alimentation, soils or world...