13 May 2016: Members of the Near East and North Africa (NENA) region of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) adopted a declaration on the importance of peace and stability for the long-term success of development efforts. In the declaration, adopted during the 33rd Regional Conference for the Near East (NERC 33), member States express their concern about the deteriorating impact that conflicts, occupation and protracted crisis have on food security and nutrition in the region, and welcome FAO’s efforts to raise awareness of “the intricate link between food security, stability and peace, in the framework of the newly adopted Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development.”

Held 9-13 May 2016, at FAO headquarters in Rome, Italy, NERC 33 included a three-day meeting of senior officers and a two day high-level segment. The senior officers meeting reviewed progress and discussed the expansion of regional initiatives addressing systemic risks in the NENA Region, including on the contribution of livestock to food security, the empowerment of small-scale farmers, and the implementation of FAO’s Blue Growth Initiative, which applies the concepts of the green economy and the blue economy to the fisheries and aquaculture sectors.

The NERC 33 high-level segment adopted the ministerial declaration and discussed progress on the implementation of FAO’s regional priority activities on resilience for food security and nutrition, small-scale agriculture for food security and development and water scarcity.

Participants also considered a document on the implications of the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for FAO’s work in the region. The document titled ‘Agriculture and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: the Need to Address Cross-sectoral Interactions in the NENA Region’ states that achieving the SDGs will require overcoming the traditional emphasis of agricultural development on individual sectors such as crops, livestock, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture, which creates competition among sectors and “results in sub-optimal allocation and management of resources.” The text emphasizes the need to explore synergies between these sectors, in particular with regard to the management of water in the NENA region. The document suggests using FAOs ‘Common Vision for Sustainable Development in Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries’ to identify opportunities to support Agenda 2030 implementation, including through: multi-stakeholder, multi-sector approaches; addressing trade-offs and encouraging synergies; and strengthening collaboration between countries and FAO in developing monitoring mechanisms for measuring progress.

Held every two years, the FAO Regional Conferences are high-level consultations that explore the special problems of each region and the priority areas that should be taken into account in preparing the biennial Programme of Work and budget, as well as longer-term programmatic objectives for the region. In addition to discussing the levels and nature of external support required to implement regional food and agricultural development plans, the consultations also focus on the means by which countries of the region can solve their own problems through the use of their own resources. [FAO Press Release on Conference Opening] [NERC 33 Website] [FAO Press Release on Conference Closing] [Agriculture in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: The Need to Address Cross-sectoral Interactions in the Near East and North Africa Region] [NERC 33 Ministerial Declaration]