Many countries aim to reduce the environmental footprint of agriculture while feeding a growing and richer global population. Agriculture has a role to play in contributing to greener growth, in particular through improving the efficiency of resource use, reducing environmental impact, focusing on the ecosystem, and encouraging R&D and technologies to improve resource use productivity. OECD work on rebuilding fisheries looks at ways to enable this sector to recover growth while reducing the environmental impact. |
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Green growth was identified as one of the priorities by Agriculture Ministers at their meeting in 2010 (www.oecd.org/agriculture/ministerial). Ministers asked the OECD to identify policy options and market approaches that would encourage “green growth,” including mitigation of the food and agriculture system’s contribution to climate change, as well as adaptation to its impacts.
For agriculture, this means
Current OECD work
Agriculture
The focus of OECD work is to identify policies which will help the agricultural sector to meet green growth objectives while ensuring increased food supplies.
A sectoral study on agriculture and green growth has been prepared: A Green Growth Strategy for Food and Agriculture. The study focuses on the ways in which the agriculture sector can contribute to green growth, and on the role of different policies in helping or hindering that contribution. This includes:
Fisheries
Pressure to take strong policy action to rebuild depleted fisheries has been increasing over the past two decades. At the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, governments around the world committed to the goal of rebuilding fish stocks. The Johannesburg Plan of Implementation requires countries to maintain or restore stocks to levels to produce the maximum sustainable yield with the aim of achieving these goals, not later than 2015.
The OECD study “The Economics of Rebuilding Fisheries” will focus on the political economy of reform in rebuilding fisheries, including not only healthy and productive fish stocks but also a prosperous fishing industry and communities, with least harm to the environment. It will provide practical and evidence-based advice for policy makers to ensure that fisheries rebuilding programmes succeed and have an economically and environmentally positive contribution over the longer term. The key messages include the need to reform production-distorting subsidies, implement policies to facilitate good fisheries management, and strive towards an internationally coordinated approach to deal with the challenges of the “global fisheries and marine commons”.
Events
Further reading
Sustainable agriculture: www.oecd.org/agriculture/env
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