Agriculture is one of the key motors of the global economy. It is a source of foods, fibers and, increasingly, fuel. It provides livelihoods and subsistence for the largest number of people worldwide. It is vital to rural development and therefore critical to poverty alleviation.
Cultivated land, including arable lands and shifting cultivation, covers approximately 24 percent of the world's land area. Partly or fully irrigated agriculture claims 70 percent of the world's developed fresh water supplies. Today, agriculture accounts for over 38 percent of global employment.
The major challenge today therefore is to secure and increase agricultural yield while at the same time conserving biodiversity, ecosystems, and resources as well as maintaining a healthy base for those who rely on agriculture for their livelihoods. In other words, balancing agricultural productivity with the needs of ecosystems and biodiversity to ensure they are all able to deliver their services in a sustainable manner.
The key to achieving this lies in the implementation of sustainable agriculture. This more holistic and systemic approach integrates the three pillars of sustainability: profitability, environmental protection and social equity. It includes the premise that agriculture needs to be managed while supporting biodiversity and ecosystem health. Integrated Crop Management (ICM) strategies that are being implemented include, among others, setting biodiversity conservation goals for farmland, such as maintaining or enhancing wildlife habitats.
The agricultural sector possesses a wealth of biodiversity-relevant knowledge and therefore has tremendous scope for the effective management of ecosystems and biodiversity resources. Farmers are the stewards of the agricultural landscape, its supporting ecosystems and biodiversity.
Crucially, business has a vital role to play in achieving agricultural sustainability. Particularly, those companies in the bio-crop and agricultural sectors can deliver solutions that make agriculture more effective. Some WBCSD member companies are continuously working to develop crop technologies that make agricultural production more effective while respecting biodiversity.
Available solutions include energy and water-efficient irrigation techniques, energy-efficient harvesting mechanisms, etc. Similarly, green biotechnology solutions for new traits of seeds (higher yields and quality) and crop protection technologies will also help to achieve biodiversity and ecosystem-related objectives.
Many companies, both in the agricultural sector and further down the value chain, are willing to make the investments and develop the technologies and approaches to contribute towards sustainable agriculture as witnessed by the number of business led initiatives established to standardize certification procedures and environmental standards.
However, to do so they need to gain an economic return on investment and therefore rely on supportive science based policy frameworks and Intellectual Property Rights. Governments need to set targets and provide the necessary policy and market frameworks. However, such targets will remain moot if adequate enforcement mechanisms are not in place.
Similarly, any policy framework needs to be properly integrated across a wide variety of sectors and technologies, as well as regions, to ensure that it does not create perverse or counter-incentives. Business and many leading non-governmental organizations are ready to work with governments to achieve these objectives.
Fossil Fuel
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