Draft Resolution Sponsored by Chile

THE SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE ASIA PACIFIC PARLIAMENTARY FORUM

Considering that, according to FAO, food security exists “when all people, at all times, have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs", which involves conditions of availability, access and stability of supply;

Noting the worrying results as to worldwide hunger reduction that, according to FAO estimates, indicate that in 2007 more than 900 mil lion people in the world suffered from hunger;

Observing that such a situation has been deepened due to the impact of worldwide volatility effects of food prices, the energy crisis and the financial crisis, that affecting with greater or smaller intensity to all the economies of the world, all point to the circumstances of an interdependent world;

Sharing the concern declared in Lima recently by the leaders of the APEC economies about the impact that worldwide volatile prices, combined with food shortage in some of the developing economies, are having on the achievements of the Region in poverty alleviation, making it more difficult to fulfil the Millennium Development Goals (MDG);

Worried about the possibility that the current global economic and financial conditions deflect attention from the problem of hunger in the world and deepen even more their consequences with respect to food security;

Convinced that the achievement of food security requires confronting immediate factors with emergency as well as others of more structural nature;

Sharing the concern declared recently by the FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf about the urgency of “laying the basis for a new system of governance on food security and agricultural trade”;

Resolves  to:

1.             Reaffirm the need to maintain the world attention on the food security issue, apart from food price movements, so that the availability and access to adequate nourishment for the entire population be a true priority of the world political agenda;

2.             Call upon international finance organizations and industrialized countries to pay special attention to the needs of developing countries, particularly in investment issues dealt with the rural sector;

3.             Strengthen the job regarding about the current and resultant challenges of food security carried out by the internal organs of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum (APEC) like also to encourage discussion and analysis within other national and international platforms and forums where the APEC economies leaders participate;

4.             Encourage an integral treatment of the issue considering both the short-term measures put on the road to face the most immediate needs and the long-term structural policies and problems having effect on food security;

5.             Emphasize the need to consider the interdependence with other big world crises revealed nowadays, especially the analysis of the possible effects of the financial crisis on food security, the role of speculation in the rise of prices and considerations imposed by climate change;

6.             Call attention on the need to lessen the obstacles in international agricultural trade and in the policies distorting the market in order to improve the access to world markets and step up the capacity of agricultural producers, particularly in developing countries;

7.             Reiterate the need to liberalize trade, especially the agricultural trade, and to demand the removal of protectionism and subsidies that developing countries impose to their agricultures, thus distorting international agricultural trade;

8.             Take note of the declaration issued by all APEC Forum member economies leaders after the meeting held on November 23^rd, promoting a coordinated response and an enhancing food security strategy in the Region in dealing with volatility effects of food prices;

9.             Share the decision adopted inside this same platform regarding that the APEC member economies shall look for increasing the cooperation to raise food production, to foster the production of biofuels with inedible materials and to develop scientific-based regulatory methods for implementing agricultural biotechnology;

10.         Admit that it is necessary to amend the present system as the FAO Director-General has pointed out that creates global food insecurity because of trade distortions in the international market;

11.         Recognize the need to lay the foundations for a new system of governance of global food security involving the checking of policies, rules and mechanisms of agriculture planning in force, in order to guarantee a fair international agricultural trade with solutions cutting across national concern;

12.         Stimulate an international alliance in order to establish a new system of global food security paving the way for rooting the world hunger definitively out.