Excerpt
TENSIONS between the North and South routinely surface in international meetings. The April 15-19, 1991, international sustainable agriculture meeting held in Den Bosch, The Netherlands, was no exception.
Cosponsored by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and the Dutch government, the Den Bosch meeting marked a first attempt by the U.N. system to forge a global consensus on how to strive toward sustainable agriculture and rural development, or SARD.
It also provided a forum for an extraordinary exchange of views and perceptions, for example, this historic observation offered by the Panamanian delegate: “Our agroecology problems started when Columbus reached America… Ever since they've always given us little bits of glass in return for our gold.”
Conference goals
The Den Bosch conference was designed to serve as one of FAO's principle preparatory activities prior to the June 1992 U.N. Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) that will be held in Brazil. Organizers hope that UNCED will produce a global “Land Charter” and a “Plan for the 21st Century,” establishing new mechanisms to reconcile tensions between the environment and development. While an important preparatory …
Footnotes
Charles Benbrook is president of Benbrook Consulting Services, 24222 White's Ferry Road, Dickerson, Maryland 20842.
- Copyright 1991 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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