AGRICULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT - Science for Agriculture and Rural Development in Low-income Countries - page 70

Table 1. The relation of three environmental issues with the Millennium Development Goals

Millennium
Development
Goal

Climate change Soil and land

degradation and use

Biodiversity

of agro-chemicals

Direct impact via the
reduction of livelihood
assets: e.g. water,
houses, infrastructure.
Negative affects on
regional food production
and deteriorate food
security.

Loss of soil fertility
reduces land
productivity, leading
to a decline in food
production capacity.
Destruction of
infrastructure (land
slides, mud slides)

Control of pests
and diseases.
Diversity of gene
pool of crops and
livestock.
Flood control
modifies wetland
conditions and re-
duces biodiversity.

Eradicate extreme
poverty and hunger

Direct via area expansion
of vector borne diseases
such as malaria and
dengue.
In areas with reduced
rainfall a decline in water
availability will result in an
increase of water borne
diseases.
Deteriorating food
security will undermine
the health of vulnerable
groups.

Direct impact via
pollution of drinking
water and chemical
residues on food and
fruit crops.

Reduce child
mortality

Ensure environ-
mental sustainability

These are core issues in defining environmental sustainability.

Develop a global
partnership for
development

These issues require global cooperation and the development of
trading and finance mechanisms.

Changes in society also influence agriculture. Support from the science, business
and policy communities is needed to develop more sustainable rural economies and
re-assess the role of agriculture. Redesigning agriculture to provide services and
common goods creates opportunities to move to integrated solutions. This, however,
requires political will and the creation of new markets. Increased water and nutrient
use efficiencies, for instance, will be essential in sustainable agricultural systems, as
that reduces both the pollution load to the environment and the costs.
However, there are inevitable trade-offs between various activities. Not only
trade-offs between the three pillars of sustainability, but also scale- and resource-
dependent trade-offs. Biophysical scales are linked and understanding the effects of,
e.g., management activities, requires up- and down-scaling of biophysical processes.
The same holds for the socio-economic environment, the various actors and
institutions (e.g., public and private, profit and non-profit) which operate at different
scales. Decisions at higher scales tend to restrict or influence lower scale decision
making.