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| Regional Priorities |
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Reducing vulnerability to disasters
Goal: reduced vulnerability to disasters, increased resilience of rural livelihoods and improved recovery capacity to enable sustainable agriculture and rural development.
The majority of the world's major natural and man-made disasters occur in Asia and the Pacific. Disasters -- drought, floods, storms, fires, earthquakes, volcano eruptions, land and mud slides, windstorms, cyclones, typhoons, and animal and plant pests and diseases -- cause much suffering, depredate resources and arrest poverty alleviation.
Many factors come into play in these catastrophes. The more important of these interrelated determinants are poverty; settlement of fragile ecosystems; exploitative agricultural systems and practices; and land degradation and water scarcity, leading to even more food insecurity. This vicious cycle is exacerbated by widespread adoption of industrial farming methods, especially in livestock and fisheries enterprises, sometimes leading to pest and disease epidemics. Moreover, global warming and climate change will shift their destructive potential to a higher scale.
These calamities inflict severe social and economic losses as well as human suffering on the victims. Particularly worrisome, they disrupt livelihoods, erode farm assets and destroy the environment, thereby making sustainable development difficult.
FAO is working to improve livelihoods in disaster-prone areas. Specific objectives are:
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reduced risk of disasters in the agriculture sector and increased coping and recovery capacity; |
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improved food security and balanced nutrition; |
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sustainable agriculture applying environment-friendly farming system best practices and protecting natural resource endowments; and |
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prevention and control of human, animal and plant pests and diseases. |
For more information on the six thematic programme areas guiding FAO's work in the region in its mission to help member countries halve the region's undernourished by 2015 see RAP Publication 2004/06 Towards a food-secure Asia and Pacific. Regional Strategic Framework for Asia and Pacific, second edition.
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