New report: Unlikely alliances bringing back dead rivers, barren landscapes, and farm yields
June 15, 2012 report released by a newly launched global coalition of research, advocacy and multilateral organizations.
WASHINGTON, DC (14 JUNE 2012)—An unconventional approach that involves building alliances between groups competing for limited land and water resources has the potential to dramatically increase food production, boost rural incomes, improve human health and restore degraded land, rivers and habitats, according to a report released today by a newly launched global coalition of leading research, advocacy and multilateral organizations.
The coalition, known as the Landscapes for People, Food and Nature Initiative, a collaborative international initiative with ten co-organizers, warns, however, that world leaders must use the upcoming Rio+20 global sustainable development conference to dramatically scale up the "whole landscape" approach—if planet-wide food and environmental crises are to be averted. The whole landscape approach will figure prominently in discussions at Rio+20.
"Today, the world is stuck in a vicious cycle that locks farmers, governments, companies and communities in the pursuit of short-term, narrowly defined solutions to food, energy and water conflicts as they emerge," said Sara Scherr, president and CEO of EcoAgriculture Partners, a co-organizer of the Initiative. "We are often solving one problem while exacerbating another, using blinkered crisis management approaches." . . .
