Sustainable Agriculture

Agriculture covers a third of the world's land surface. It provides the primary economic activity for more people than any other sector. Agricultural trade liberalization is driving significant national policymaking activity, impacting food production and consumption, and also other interconnected issues, including biodiversity, food security, poverty reduction and nutrition. To mitigate negative and enhance positive impacts of agricultural trade liberalization, it is essential that national governments implement agricultural policies that support sustainable development goals.

UNEP-ETB undertakes a number of activities to assist countries in promoting sustainable agriculture. Chiefly, UNEP-ETB supports national-level assessments of the impacts of trade-related policies in the agricultural sector. These “integrated assessment” country projects, undertaken by domestic policy research institutions and focused on specific sectors, identify positive and negative impacts of trade and trade liberalization and provide insights on the linkages among trade, environment and development policies. Each country project concludes by recommending a set of practical measures and policy responses, including economic instruments, designed to maximize the net gains to sustainable development from trade.

Most recently, UNEP-ETB supported six countries - China, Colombia, Indonesia, Nigeria, Senegal and Viet Nam - in undertaking an Integrated Assessment of the Impacts of Trade Liberalization on the Rice Sector. The outcomes of these studies, which led to a number of policy recommendations and informed trade liberalization negotiations at the multilateral and regional levels, were presented in an International Workshop in September 2005. In addition, UNEP-ETB is currently undertaking a major initiative in close collaboration with the Convention on Biological Diversity, focusing on six countries in the African, Caribbean and Pacific region, on an Integrated Assessment of Trade-Related Policies and Biological Diversity in the Agriculture Sector. UNEP-ETB has also published a Handbook on Integrated Assessment of Trade-Related Policies: The Agriculture Sector.

In addition to its assessment work, UNEP-ETB is currently engaged in a new series of activities to promote organic agriculture as a tool for environmental and biodiversity conservation, market access, poverty reduction, and food security. UNEP-ETB is collaborating with UNCTAD and the FAO under the UNEP-UNCTAD CBTF to promote production and trading opportunities for organic agricultural products in East Africa.

UNEP-ETB is also an active member of the FAO/UNCTAD/IFOAM International Task Force on Harmonization and Equivalency in Organic Agriculture.