The Director-General of the FAO, José Graziano da Silva, at the organizations headquarter in Rome, noted that the recent increase in the number of hungry people in the world requires immediate action.
He noted that the latest hunger figure estimated at 815 million people has marked the first increase after more than 10 years of celebrating a steady decline in food insecurity.
He further said obesity and overweight are also growing in developed and developing countries, posing another source of concern.
Jose Graziano said: “The most important thing to do now is to build the resilience of poor people to face the impacts of conflicts and climate change, making sure that humanitarian assistance is combined with development actions to chart a course towards the eradication of hunger by 2030”.
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The Director-General outlined major events in 2018, including high-level international symposia on agroecology, Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems, innovation for smallholder and family farmers and plans to launch an International Platform for Biodiversity.
Those initiatives are designed to support countries to put in place sustainable agricultural practices that combine food production, ecosystem services, and climate-change resilience at the same time.
According to the director, key programmes geared towards fighting back hunger will come early in 2018, at the African Union summit in Ethiopia and at FAO’s regional conferences, including the first one to be held in Sudan.
Moreso, in 2018, FAO will act as co-chair of the Global Migration Group which comprises of 22 United Nations agencies mandated to help draft a Global Compact on Safe, Regularly and Orderly Migration agreement.
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