News archive 2017

FAO today marked World Water Day by highlighting the opportunity that treated wastewater represents for agriculture, and improved food security and nutrition.

Applying sustainable forest management practices throughout the charcoal value chain is essential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions while maintaining the access of households to renewable energy, FAO said today on the occasion of the UN’s International Day of Forests.

Warning of “colossal” negative impacts for the environment and human societies if the massive stores of carbon trapped in the Earth’s soils are released, Fijian president Jioji Konousi Konrote has called for stronger management of this critical natural resource speaking at the start of an international symposium.

FAO is further scaling up its activities in drought affected regions of Somalia thanks to a $22 million loan approved this week by the United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), which complements the loans already provided by FAO’s Special Fund for Emergency and Rehabilitation Activities.

FAO and the world’s leading climate-change authority signed an agreement today allowing both institutions to better serve countries around the world to adapt to and mitigate the impact of warmer global temperatures and meet their pledges to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

A resurgent outbreak of a new strain of H7N9 avian influenza in China that can be lethal for humans underscores the need for robust and rapid detection and response systems at animal source. This would reduce the risk associated with virus spread and impacts on public health, according to FAO and OIE.

Twenty of the country's 22 governorates are in ‘emergency' or ‘crisis' food insecurity phases and almost two-thirds of the population are now facing hunger and urgently require life and livelihood-saving assistance. Without additional humanitarian and livelihoods support, Taiz and Al Hudaydah, two governorates accounting for almost a quarter of Yemen's population, risk slipping into famine.

Economic growth and rising per capita incomes have all but wiped out hunger in Europe and Central Asia. But as countries become more affluent, changing consumption patterns are giving rise to other health threats. This “food insecurity transition” is documented in a new report released today by FAO.

The United States is the newest member of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, a ground-breaking instrument that works to strengthen global food security by promoting the conservation, sharing, and sustainable use of agricultural plant genetic resources.

Access to water is a fundamental need for food security, human health and agriculture, and its looming scarcity in the North Africa and Middle East region is a huge challenge requiring an “urgent and massive response,” FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva said in Cairo.