INTERNATIONAL SOIL AND WATER FORUM Inauguration Ceremony Opening Remarks

Her Excellency the Minister for Agriculture and Cooperatives of the Kingdom of Thailand,

Her Excellency the UN Special Envoy on Water

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Dear Colleagues,

Welcome to the International Soil and Water Forum in Bangkok – the first such conference in the world!

First, I would like to thank the Kingdom of Thailand for hosting this important event, and for their continuous commitment and efforts to prioritize soils and land on the global agenda, together with FAO.

Today, over 730 million people face hunger – one in 11 people around the world. At the same time, 2.8 billion people live in water-stressed countries – further deepening food and livelihood insecurity.

The world’s natural resources – including soil, water and land – are being depleted at an alarming rate, while climate-induced natural disasters are occurring more frequently and with more intensity around the world.

Agriculture is one of the most highly exposed and vulnerable sectors to these impacts.

With agriculture using roughly 70 percent of global freshwater, land and soil degradation are directly undermining agrifood systems, severely threatening global food insecurity and malnutrition.

Over one third of our soil faces degradation and over 60 percent of human-induced land degradation occurs on agricultural lands,

Pushing land, soils and freshwater systems to their productive limits, and increasing the water crisis, including water scarcity, droughts, floods, and pollution. These are the four elements of water that together compose the global mapping of water.

As we open this Forum this morning, the COP 16 of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification is meeting in Riyadh and discussing key issues related to soil health, resilience to water scarcity, which is especially critical in that part of the world, and which leads to the big scientific challenge of how to manage water circulation. The solutions lie in global cooperation to ensure effective water circulation.

COP 16 is also discussing drought, land restoration and other agrifood systems solutions, all critical issues to all three Rio conventions. Confirming that land, soil and water, and agrifood systems, are at the center of global discussions, and hold the solutions and the actions we need.

The Rio Convention started with the Summit in 1992, which was two generations ago, and so now it is high time to move from big talk to big action!

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We are off-track to achieving the SDGs, and we only have five years to correct our course with accelerated actions. This means scaling up efforts to sustainably use and manage land, soil and water resources.

This is why the FAO Strategic Framework 2022-31 focuses on the transformation to more efficient, more inclusive, more resilient and more sustainable agrifood systems, and the Four Betters: better production, better nutrition, a better environment, and a better life - leaving no one behind.

Yesterday I visited a village where I saw firsthand the Four Betters in action on the ground – the Baan Saladin Community Village just outside Bangkok – one of approximately 30 in Thailand. And I invite all today’s participants to visit this village to see how to effectively put the Four Betters into practice on the ground.

I wish to thank and acknowledge the Ministries of Agriculture and Cooperatives, of Science and Technology, and of Education, of the Kingdom of Thailand for this excellent collaboration leading to this excellent result on the ground.

This International Soil and Water Forum is a unique platform to:

One: raise awareness of these crises,

Two: share best practices,

Three: strengthen science, innovation and international cooperation, and

Four: promote sustainable solutions for managing our natural resources.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The future of our planet, and of global food security, will depend on building more equitable and resilient agrifood systems, as recognized in the UN Pact for the Future adopted at the UN Summit of the Future in September this year.

This landmark agreement adopted by Member States in September affirmed the commitment of world leaders to end hunger and eliminate food insecurity and all forms of malnutrition.

Furthermore, last month at the G20 in Brazil, 81 global leaders, together with 31 international organizations and over 33 civil society organizations endorsed the Brazilian Presidency’s Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty.

In my humble 45 years of experience, I have never seen such a large and global endorsement for one single initiative, which means that the Global Alliance is a truly universal agreement reached by consensus, and for which FAO will provide support by hosting its Support Mechanism.

But it does not end there.

We need to continue to build on these commitments and turn this political commitment into action.

Next year will mark FAO’s 80th anniversary. 80 years of efforts to eliminate hunger and malnutrition, 80 years of promoting food safety and food security, 80 years of supporting small-scale farmers to protect and strengthen their livelihoods - after World War II this was the dream of our ancestors.

We have managed to reduce global hunger from 90% to 10%, but we have all the necessary tools in the toolbox, we have the science, innovation and technology, to end hunger totally.

Regions like Asia can contribute, especially Southeast Asia, by sharing their successful experience with the rest of the world, especially with regard to food diversity, which is the basis of the quality of life. We need to shift from biodiversity to food diversity, and this region exemplifies how this can be achieved.

As we look to the future – to the next 80 years and beyond (which may be too long for the west but is too short for the east!) - our younger generations will look back and evaluate whether we have done enough.

We have no time to lose, we must scale up our thoughts, our actions and our deliverables.

To achieve this, we will need more efficient, more effective and more coherent collaboration for concrete action on the ground.

Together, we can create a better future, and a safer future, for all.

Thank you.