Twentieth FAO Regional
Conference for Europe
Tel Aviv, Israel, 29 April - 3 May 1996
Your Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The Twentieth Regional Conference for
Europe is being held in Tel Aviv at a time when tragic
events in this area have once again brought sorrow and
mourning to peoples who have lived through so many
painful trials in the course of their long history.
The Director-General of the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations would be
guilty by reason of silence if he failed, on such a
solemnoccasion and in a place so fraught with symbolism,
to invoke the principles of the United Nations on which
the existence of his Organization is founded.
There can be no economic development,
and, singularly, no improvement in food security, unless
there is peace. There can be no peace without justice,
and no just relations between individuals and peoples,
unless the inalienable rights of people and nations are
respected.
The heroes who should be glorified
before the young people of this world are not the
illustrious heroes of military victories, founded on
blood and tears: the real heroes are those who have given
their lives to promote understanding among peoples. They
are the statesmen who made the supreme sacrifice to
change the reputedly inexorable course of tragic events.
They are the doctors who died from diseases contracted
while caring for their patients. They are those who risk
their lives every day to bring relief to refugees or to
snatch innocent victims from the relentless clutches of
their executioners.
International cooperation and
understanding can only find a durable basis in the
primacy of law, not in the superiority of force. Without
this, frustration and oppression are sure tomorrow if not
today to give rise to new sources of conflict and
destruction.
Wars are nothing but a tragic fool's
lure against which vain dreams of dominance are
shattered. The battle to win hearts is the only battle
worth winning. As the Spanish poet Miguel de Unamuno
pointed out, the only true human challenge is not towin,
but to win over.
Mahatma Gandhi stands as an immortal
beacon who demonstrated the virtues of nonviolence to an
entire continent. And if Nelson Mandela has become a
universal symbol, it is because he has drawn on reserves
of goodness and goodwill that have left him without
hatred for the partisans of racial hegemony who deprived
him of his liberty for an entire generation.
May conscience which as the French
essayist Alain said, is moral because it always opposes
what should be to what is guide in the path of reason and
moderation, those who hold the peoples' fate in their
hands.
Your Excellencies, Ladies and
Gentlemen,
May I now express to Prime Minister
Shimon Peres and to the Government and people of Israel
FAO's gratitude for their generous hospitality, and the
thanks of its DirectorGeneral for their every attention
to the various delegations and to the Secretariat of the
Organization.
Your Excellencies, Ladies and
Gentlemen,
Contrary to our preconceived notions,
Europe is more than just a well watered, homogeneous
region particularly welladapted to cereal cropping, with
a temperate climate and lush pastures for grazing. This
is no doubt true of most of the region, where a very old
civilization, the energy of farmers and scientific
progress have all combined to thrust Europe into the
limelight as one of today's foremost agro alimentary
powers.
The region is also characterized by
extreme diversity which owes at least as much to nature
as to history. It includes a vast Mediterranean zone
where oor (or in any case fragile) soils are as prone to
aridity, drought and desertification as those across the
Mediterranean in North Africa or the Near East.
The collapse of the centrallyplanned
economies and of their agricultural production structures
plunged all of Central and Eastern Europe into a crisis
involving severe, if temporary, production slumps and
severely disorganized channels of distribution a crisis
from which only a few are now beginning to emerge. The
situation of those European populations whose lives have
been touched by internal conflicts, war and exodus is
even more painful.
This is the part of the world where
the objectives of food security are closest to being met.
The region exports vast quantities of grain to the
deficit countries and ranks among the top providers of
food assistance. But recession in some economies has also
produced a tragic parade of unemployed, povertystricken
and excluded people, while at the same time hunger and
malnutrition dog millions of men, women and children in
parts of the region made vulnerable by nature or by
political and economic circumstances. The fact that the
region has been a net importer of cereal grains in the
last few years, despite the substantial cereal exports of
Western Europe, is a telling indication.
This Regional Conference, like the
others this year, has a dominant theme: the World Food
Summit, which will be held in Rome in November 1996. In
the 50 years since the founding of FAO, this will be the
first time that a meeting on world food has been held at
the level of Heads of State and Government. The fact that
the proposed Summit was unanimously approved by the
Conference of FAO and backed by the United Nations
General Assembly clearly attests that the problem has now
become very serious.
The sheer scale and nature of the food
problem have evolved with a speed typical of our century.
It is FAO's prime responsibility to alert world opinion
and world leaders to the deteriorating food situation
before it attains irreversibly catastrophic proportions.
There has undoubtedly been prodigious
progress in technology and know how in recent decades;
the transformation in plant and animal production, the
knowledge and use of inputs, progress in water management
and in resource conservation, storage and processing
techniques have revolutionized the rural and agricultural
sectors in many countries.
And yet, at the same time, the world
population has grown substantially even as the per capita
farmland continues to diminish. The current modes of
exploitation degrade the environment; forest cover is
shrinking fast, and as increasingly marginal land is
brought under the plough, the pace of erosion has
accelerated. Fishery resources are overexploited and in
this as in many other domains, nature can no longer
regenerate its resources as fast as people destroy them.
Additionally, even though there is now
enough food to feed everyone in the world, its
distribution remains terribly skewed.
Political upheavals, conflict, and the
growing plethora of refugees and displaced persons
exacerbate the situation.
In the developing countries, nearly
800 million people are chronically undernourished and
some 200 million children under the age of five are
affected by acute or chronic protein and calorie
deficiency.
And yet, the right to food is
absolutely fundamental; it is the first and foremost
human right, without which the others have no meaning.
How can a hungry person be expected to exercise his or
her right to education, work, and culture, and to
participate fully in the political and social life of the
community?
Food and water loom prominently among
the major world challenges as we enter the third
millennium. The dimensions of the problem are ethical,
political and strategic, and could lead to extremely
violent and serious conflict unless we put things right.
FAO is so keenly aware of the need for
strong, immediate action that it launched a Special
Programme for Food Security for LowIncome, FoodDeficit
Countries, without awaiting the worldlevel decisions that
will be taken by the Summit.
The philosophy behind the Programme,
now in its pilot phase in about 15 countries and showing
promising results, can help to chart the major
orientations of the Summit.
Public opinion and the media will have
to be mobilized, however, with world political leaders
setting the guidelines for resolute and dynamic food
policies and solid sustained action.
The general debate on food will also
address the problems of investment and trade, which are
of particular importance. Beyond the Summit itself, what
is needed is a truly global campaign, with cooperation
and consultation at all levels.
The driving force for this campaign to
ensure "Food for All" would come from National Committees
involving all segments of civil society: the private
sector, nongovernmental organizations, academic and
research institutions, women's associations and youth
groups. To muster the support and mobilization necessary
to ensure its success will demand longterm commitment and
sustained resources.
The challenge before the World Food
Summit is unprecedented. Even though much has been done
to overcome hunger and malnutrition, to bolster
agricultural growth and to ensure that the available food
is distributed more equitably, past actions have for the
most part been oneoff, uncoordinated efforts.
What are now required are articulated
actions that will target every country where the need for
programmes to secure or consolidate food security is
becoming increasingly acute.
The huge surpluses in the developed
countries were long and erroneously seen as a global
cushion against serious shortfalls. Even back in the
1970s the food crisis brought home how easily
thesemountains of surpluses could vanish like snow in the
sun, leaving painful shortages. After a renewed period of
bumper surpluses, we are now back to a situation where
the world's grain reserves have fallen below the level
considered necessary to guarantee global food security.
World prices have soared and the lowincome, fooddeficit
countries will have to pay out an additional 3 billion
dollars this year for their food imports.
The Poet Aragon wrote that man's work
is never done. Nonetheless, it is precisely this state of
uncertainty that inspires human endeavour. Has not
impending disaster always driven people to come up with
the energy and inventive capacity required for their
survival? We are, all of us, now living in a state of
impending disaster.
And yet, paradoxically, this could
prove to be the hope and salvation of this and future
generations, if only we can read the signs of the times
and rise to the occasion. Prodigiously clear thinking,
imagination, courage, patience and tenacity will be
required, as will universal mobilization on a scale
largely unparallel in human history.
Citizens of all countries and ranks,
of all ages and religions, associations and groups of all
kinds; professionals from all sectors; community leaders
in the intellectual, social, economic, political and
spiritual walks of life; government officials and
representatives at all levels; men and women from the
smallest villages to the largest international
organization will have to marshal their forces and rally
together for an allout joint effort.
Are there sufficient resources for
such a vast undertaking? Will the interdependence of our
global village outweigh the narrow shortterm interests
that divide it? I hope with all my heart that this is so.
Confidently, therefore, and from the bottom of my heart,
I wish you every success in the work of the Twentieth
Regional Conference for Europe.
Thank you for your kind attention.
