AGRICULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT - Science for Agriculture and Rural Development in Low-income Countries - page 59

21 and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), agreed at the Millennium
Summit in September 2000, was given. Concrete steps and quantifiable targets for
implementing Agenda 21 were formulated in, amongst others, framework papers on
Water, Energy, Health, Agriculture and Biodiversity (WEHAB Working Group,
2002). The MDGs, specifying the key targets for the most urgent and immediate
development needs, seek to:

• Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger;

• Achieve universal primary education;

• Promote gender equality and empower women;

• Reduce child mortality;

• Improve maternal health;

• Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases;

• Ensure environmental sustainability;

• Develop a global partnership for development.

As for most developing countries agriculture is, currently, the main economic activity
and has traditionally been the key livelihood strategy for most people living in rural
areas, it is a key sector in achieving the MDGs.
Recently, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA 2005), a review of scientific
information on the consequences of ecosystem change for human well-being, ultimately
aiming at informing decision makers and the larger public, arrived at the following
conclusions:

• Over the past 50 years, humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and

extensively than in any comparable period of time in human history, largely
to meet rapidly growing demands for food, fresh water, timber, fiber and
fuel.

• The changes that have been made to ecosystems have contributed to substan-

tial net gains in human well-being and economic development, but these
gains have been achieved at growing costs in the form of the degradation of
many ecosystem services, increased risks of nonlinear changes, and the
exacerbation of poverty for some groups of people.

• The degradation of ecosystem services could grow significantly worse

during the first half of this century and is a barrier to achieving the
Millennium Development Goals.

• The challenge of reversing the degradation of ecosystems while meeting

increasing demands for their services can be partially met under some
scenarios that the MA has considered but these involve significant changes
in policies, institutions and practices, that are not currently under way (MA
2005). To get more understanding of the kind of policy and institutional
changes required, an international assessment on the future role of agricultural
knowledge, science and technology for development is under way
(www.agassessment.org; Bouma et al. 2007).