UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME (UNDP) - PROGRAMME DES NATIONS UNIES POUR LE DEVELOPPEMENT - PROGRAMA DE LAS NACIONES UNIDAS PARA EL DESARROLLO

Mr. James Gustave Speth, Administrator and United Nations Special Coordinator for Economic and Social Development (UNDP)

This World Food Summit represents the latest in a series of world gatherings organized by the United Nations system, starting in Rio and now convening here in Rome truly one of the world's great cities.

Twenty-two years ago nations also assembled to pledge to fight the scourge of hunger and malnutrition. The World Food Conference in 1974 established the goal of eradicating hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition within a decade. That conference resulted in the establishment of IFAD and the launching of other initiatives, but despite these efforts today we know that some 840 million people do not have enough to eat, go to bed hungry and suffer from chronic malnutrition.

I arrived here today from Kigali, Rwanda. The humanitarian situation unfolding there in the Great Lakes Region is heart rending. It is heart rending because of the food shortage, because of the starvation, because of the death. There the food crisis is acute not chronic. Yet I must say that I was encouraged to see the United Nations agencies working together. The World Food Programme and UNICEF, UNHCR and FAO, UNDP, the Department of Humanitarian Affairs (DHA) and others together closely doing what they can do today to address the crisis and preparing for what may be possible tomorrow.

At this Summit, thanks to the untiring work of you, the Member States, ably supported by the FAO, nations have another chance to join forces to meet the challenge of global food insecurity, both chronic and acute. We must not let this opportunity slip into history. The goal of achieving sustainable food security for all emerges as one of the greatest challenges humanity has ever faced. Global output of food must be tripled within the next 50 years. People must have the income needed to buy it today not tomorrow, and the erosion of the environmental resource base on which food production depends, must be arrested and reversed without delay.

The world already produces enough food to nourish everyone but surpluses in some regions co-exist with desperate shortages in others. Meanwhile the soils, water, forest, genetic, climatic and fishery resources are all in widespread decline. Coupled by shortages, the funding needed for development assistance and the shortages in funding needed for agricultural research, these trends, underscore that this conference must result in far more than verbal commitments.

Food security is only possible if development lifts families out of poverty. If it is environmentally-sound development, if it is participatory development, and if it empowers people, especially women, upon whom the burden falls everywhere to nourish their families and sustain the land.

I am pleased to say that UNDP and it's associated funds including the United Nations Volunteers, the Capital Development Fund and the United Nations Office to Combat Desertification, are already working as are other United Nations entities to help countries confront hunger and malnutrition. We are supporting national programmes to create sustainable livelihoods to help eradicate poverty. We are helping to protect the environment, we are helping to advance the status of women, to promote civil society organizations. We are committed to continue in all of these directions.

Achieving sustainable food security, calls for the combined efforts of all United Nations systems partners. Virtually every United Nations entity has something important to contribute. This Summit has recognized this fact in its Commitment 7 in the Plan of Action, and I applaud you for that.

The United Nations system has forged an action plan to follow up on recent United Nations conferences in an integrated coordinated way. This initiative recognizes that each agency has much to contribute and that some agencies must lead the follow-up on particular themes. The framework now includes five inter-agency groups dedicated to basic social services for all, employment and sustainable livelihoods, the advancement of women, protecting the environmental resource base, and the broad enabling environment in which people-centred sustainable development can occur. This process is dedicated 100 percent to supporting our United Nations country teams so that they in turn, can support country efforts to realize the great goals adopted at the recent United Nations conferences. We must build on this infrastructure and commit ourselves to ensuring that an end to hunger and a goal of sustainable food security for all are central to this vital conference follow-up process. We also take this opportunity to invite the full participation of the bilateral assistance agencies with us in this effort and the NGO community as well.

I applaud the extraordinary work that has led us to a global commitment to eradicate hunger and to reduce by one-half by the year 2015 the number of undernourished people. This is an important breakthrough, it is very important to have these quantitative goals in front of us. But I hope that we can also review this goal in the year 2000 to see if it is in fact ambitious enough. Perhaps we can do better. But the goal is very clear, an end to hunger, an end to food insecurity, so let us act now, motivated by the Rome Declaration to strengthen the partnership we have forged, a United Nations alliance which is in fact your alliance, one that reaches from helping to frame these broad global objectives, to helping to provide sustainable food security to the poorest villager in the poorest country in the world.