The Asia - Pacific Regional Consultation on Investment in Land and Water comprising experts from 12 Asian countries:
Concerned for declining quality and per capita availability of agricultural land and water, for high and increasing human - population pressure - with two - thirds of the world’s poor and hungry concentrated in the Asia - Pacific Region, and alarmed by slow progress in achieving the 1996 World Food Summit target of halving by the year 2015 the global total of undernourished adults and children;
Conscious that for land and water - the core, but finite, base for agriculture - conservation, improvement, and judicious use and management are fundamental to sustainable livelihood systems, and that the productivity, profitability, income and employment opportunities and sustainability of Asia’s diverse farming systems must be enhanced to ensure long - tem food security for each household in every country;
Recognizing the predominance of small and marginal farm holdings and the risks of degradation of land and water resources through soil erosion, soil - fertility depletion, salt intrusion, waterlogging, flooding, water - table lowering, and water - quality deterioration, and emphasizing the importance of ecotechnology and skilled management for preventing and controlling such degradation processes;
Noting the serious decline since 1990 in national budgets and in donor funding to agriculture in general and to land and water sectors in particular, and mindful of much inefficient and non - transparent governance and of inadequate rights and laws for resource entitlement and utilization;
Stresses the importance and timely opportunity for the World Food Summit: five years later (WFS: fyl) to re - energize political commitments and investments to arrest and reverse the declines in natural resources and their funding supports, and to accelerate thereby an agriculture - led alleviation of rural and urban hunger and poverty;
Appeals to the Asia - Pacific Heads of State - and to Ministers of Agriculture, Rural Development, Planning and Finance - to galvanize the political will and investment commitment to form policies and take initiatives (in due proportion to the extreme urgency of sustainable natural - resource management) so as to create an enabling environment for advances in agriculture and rural development; and
Calls upon the Heads and Ministers to forge and enable public and private sector cooperation in investment and in peoples' participation for: planning and implementation of watershed and river - basin development, for integrated land, water, and irrigation management, for infrastructural and institutional strengthening and market reforms, for human - resource development - particularly for the generation, adaptation and transfer of pertinent technologies, and for an equity - and gender - sensitive approach to intensifying and diversifying national and regional agricultural economies - thereby inaugurating a sustainable Asia - Pacific Ever - Green Revolution.
Bangkok, 5 October 2001
