With a view to offer a fair playing field, Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) wishes to build on existing efforts and develop a Sustainability Framework, with universally agreed core issues, as part of its efforts for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD, or Rio 2012), which will take place in 2012. More specifically, the intent is to develop guidelines for food value chain modeling that are to serve as a template for food chain sustainability assessment, for the use of food manufacturers and retailers. Ultimately, a Sustainability Assessment for Food and Agriculture systems (SAFA), based on a set of indicators and coefficients will be developed for companies, according to their prevailing needs. Stakeholder's views will be shared in an e-forum with a different focus for each week over five weeks. The following topics will be discussed: comments on core sustainability issues and general views and expectations for international Guidelines on Sustainability Assessment of Food and Agriculture systems; indicators of Environmental Integrity; indicators of Economic Resilience; indicators of Social Well-Being; and indicators of Good Governance. Participants can register at the website: http://www.fao.org/rio20/e-forum/registration-form/en/  

date: 21 February 2011   location: virtual   contact: Noémi Nemes   e-mail: Rio20@fao.org   www: http://www.fao.org/rio20/e-forum/en/