As you close your discussion, I highlight a couple of paragraphs from the keynote statement of Ms Mirna Cunningham Kain, UN Permanent Forum Member, delivered at the FAO International Conference on Forests for Food Security and Nutrition, 13 May 2013.
Ms. Cunningham’s full statement is available at this link: http://www.fao.org/forestry/37423-0450cc563e0dcc0086872b80f40682c4f.pdf
... Supplies of wood fuels influence nutrition through their impact on the availabilityof cooked food. If there is less fuel (or time) for cooking, consumption of uncookedand reheated food may increase. This may cause a serious rise in disease incidence as some uncooked foods may not be properly digested, and cooking is necessary toremove parasites. A decrease in the number of meals provided may have a particularly damaging effect on child nutrition
Since the First World Conference in Rio de Janero in June 2012, Indigenous Peoples have continued to underscore the inextricable link between Sustainable Development, the rights of Indigenous Peoples and the traditional knowledge, cultural understandings and practices that are the basis for the full exercise and enjoyment of our Food Security. All of these elements are included in Indigenous Peoples’ definition of Food Sovereignty developed at the 1st Indigenous Peoples’ Global Consultation on Food Sovereignty and the Right to Food and affirmed in a number of Indigenous Peoples’ International Declarations:
Food Sovereignty is the right of Peoples to define their own policies andstrategies for sustainable production, distribution, and consumption of food, with respect for their own cultures and their own systems of managing natural resources and rural areas, and is considered to be a precondition for Food Security. 2
17. Food Sovereignty, as affirmed in the Declaration of Atitlan, is referenced as acomponent of the international legal framework used by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in its Policy on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples.3 It has been affirmed as a fundamental principle in a number of international Indigenous Peoples’ declarations ...
Thank you and regards,
Patricia Tendi,
Forestry Department, FAO
Patricia Tendi