New Approaches Needed to Meet Sustainable Development Challenges

FAO Director General Jose Graziano da Silva called on government ministries and international agencies to break through traditional silos and embrace more creative approaches to tackling today's developmental challenges as embodied by the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Speaking at the Forum for the Future of Agriculture in Brussels, the FAO Director General reiterated that the SDGs are interlinked and calls for new combinations of policies, programmes, partnerships and investments to achieve common goals and produce the most needed public goods. He also underscored the need to utilize a broad portfolio of tools and approaches, including agroecology and biotechnology to eradicate hunger, fight every form of malnutrition and achieve sustainable agriculture. These tools ought to serve the needs of family members, whose empowerment should be a central part of sustainable development interventions, as well as the 80% of the extreme poor and undernourished people that live in rural areas.

 "It is essential to invest and create new products, technologies, processes and friendlier business models to support them, improve their resilience and enable them to produce more in a sustainable way," the Director General said.

See the original article at the FAO Sustainable Development website.