Organic agriculture and nature conservation
Agriculture must provide food to a growing world population, including
today’s 840 million hungry people. Protected areas can contribute to food
security and poverty alleviation within, but especially around, their
boundaries. Poor land use, careless agricultural management and wrong
policy incentives damage natural habitats and accelerate the loss of plants,
animals and ecological processes that serve as the foundation of agricultural
productivity. Farmers, pastoralists and forest dwellers, including a large
proportion of indigenous people, are the main inhabitants and users of
protected areas, as well as of lands connecting these areas. They manage
genes, species and ecosystems by their decisions on what to produce and
how to produce food. Protected areas today occupy 11 percent of Earth cover,
in a landscape dominated by the agriculture sector; in fact, more than 40
percent of the land’s surface is occupied by croplands and pastures. Despite
this high interdependence between nature conservation and agriculture,
community approaches to protected areas management touch on the
periphery of agricultural activities.
Год: 2004
Язык контента: English
Author: Nadia El-Hage Scialabba
Категория: Информационный сборник
Organization: FAO