Adopted at the Pacific Regional Meeting of Parliamentarians
on Food Security, Population and Development
on the 14th August, 1996 at the Warwick Hotel, Coral Coast, Fiji.
The Pacific islands expand over millions of square kilometres of ocean and are home to more than 6 million people at varying stages of economic development, representing rich and diverse cultures, languages and social organization. Participants at the Pacific Regional Meeting of
Parliamentarians on Food Security, Population and Development, representing all the peoples of these small and scattered islands, join together in making this statement.
PREAMBLE
In the past four or five decades, the South Pacific has experienced an unprecedented rate of population growth and seen large numbers of young people move away from the rural villages and outer islands to live in the towns. This migration to the towns is changing traditional lifestyles and is threatening the ability of Pacific island countries to provide food security to all its peoples. Despite the concern of some of our governments, the growing number of people is leading to large increases in food consumption and is putting pressures on our fragile island environments.
So far we have been able to increase food production due to the progress of science and technology or have been able to import foods to supplement our diets. In our small islands, there are severe limitations to further expansion of food output. Our economic resource base is poor and cannot
continue to support a growing population. In particular, we have little new cultivable land to bring into production. The shortage of fresh water is also a serious and growing concern throughout the region. Furthermore, due to salt, acidic damage and over-cropping, soil is losing its fertility,
causing productivity to decline. We are also conscious that our marine resources are now experiencing declining harvests and, without action, our islands as we know them may not survive. But the way in which we do things must continue to represent our cultures and the issues must be confronted from our own Pacific perspectives.
In the short run we know there are many things we can do. But in the longer run we have cause for concern as our limited physical and financial resources become overstretched. Faced with this stark reality, we in the Pacific must begin our efforts now if we are to fulfill our responsibilities to present and future generations.
ENVIRONMENT, POPULATION AND FOOD PRODUCTION
Measures to limit population increase are essential if the high quality of Pacific life is to be maintained. We must at the same time develop
agriculture, forestry and fishing practices that are in harmony with the Pacific environment. We do not see development and environment issues
as incompatible. What we need are adequate resource management legislation and codes of practice, particularly for large commercial enterprises,
to ensure that the benefits from our natural resources and our development efforts will be shared amongst all and sustained over present and future
generations. The process of rapid urbanization has accelerated environmental deterioration in the major population centres and created a growing dependence on imported foods. The breakdown in traditional culture and practices has also contributed to a rise in poverty and vulnerability. More of our Pacific peoples than ever are without paid work, are living in crowded urban settlements and have no agricultural land available to sustain
them and their families. Moreover, the growing dependence on imported foods coincides with a decline in foreign aid and an increasingly competitive
world in which we must try to sell our products. Our development policies need, therefore, to take population growth and redistribution into account
To ensure that we will always be in a position to feed ourselves from our own resources.
Population factors play a critical role in the threat to our future food supplies. We, therefore, applaud plans to convene the World Food Summit in Rome with its focus on issues crucial to our survival. We support the calls for substantial increases in resources for primary health care and reproductive health services, for primary education and for integrated rural development. These services are especially critical for women and girls, and for those living in rural areas, who are often left behind in development efforts or who have little opportunity to contribute to the development process. We believe it is important to encourage the international community and the Pacific island governments to increase resources for these activities..
Our social welfare programmes and community help programmes must be supported by guaranteed access to food by the most needy, whether in urban or rural areas. Governments must also develop emergency programmes that enable them to respond to natural disasters such as cyclones and crop failures, which are all too prevalent in our region. Increasingly, our concerns focus on problems of poor nutrition and diet, leading to
obesity, diabetes and other food related diseases, which we in turn relate to our increasing dependence on imported foods.
Because of the subsistence nature of much of the Pacific agriculture and fishing, technological developments of the so-called green revolution have had little effect in the region. There are many signals that current primary production practices are environmentally destructive and thus not
sustainable. Greater effort must be made to reduce environmental degradation and to develop more sustainable agriculture and fishing systems.
Properly managed, these systems could lead to increased food production to feed our growing population and contribute to the preservation of the
environment.
ROLE OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN FOOD SECURITY, POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT
The rural communities, which have played a large role in ensuring food and water resources and preserving the environment, are under stress from
population growth and movement. Many of the most able young people are moving away from the outer islands or rural areas to the urban centres,
resulting in the erosion of the capacity of farm communities to produce food, manage land and preserve the environment. There is an urgent need
for community development to help promote the idea of smaller families, to discourage urban migration, to create more opportunities for young people
in rural areas, and to raise public awareness of the need for improved food production practices in harmony with the environment.
Governments should develop the appropriate policy framework to encourage local producers so as to enable communities to organise themselves
for their own interests and benefits. No community development can be realised without tapping the potential of women as a human resource.
Greater effort is needed to enable rural dwellers, men and women, to exercise their full economic and social power. Community development also
means the need to promote and ensure reproductive rights by making available reproductive and sexual health services, including family planning
and contraceptive services.
Development efforts, geared towards both national and household food security, must rely on the concerted efforts from all strands of society. There is a need to educate the public to enable them to make the links between household food insecurity and its consequences for the whole population.
The guarantee of food security, therefore, demands partnership between government, non-government organizations (NGOs), the private sector
and other groups in the community. Responsible behaviour by the business community, chambers of commerce and other groups is essential to
promote a healthy environment and sustainable practices. Youth and women's groups, sporting associations and public education programmes all contribute to community-wide participation. The traditional strengths of Pacific island communities must not be neglected. Our chiefs and village
councils need to serve as role models to their communities. They need support from grass root organisations, including youth and women, the
church and other NGOs, to influence national development processes.
TOWARDS FOOD SECURITY POLICIES IN THE PACIFIC ISLANDS
At the heart of Pacific development is the need to provide a good life to each child born. With our severely limited resources, overly large families detract from this goal and we recommend that governments extend reproductive health services to widen the choices available to couples to choose the size of family they desire.
As Parliamentarians, we acknowledge that our survival depends on the long-term viability of our systems of primary production. We believe that
some of the primary production processes we engage in today are environmentally unsound and lack sustainability. Hence, we call upon all our
governments to review food security policies to develop more ecologically and environmentally sound production processes, to encourage healthier
and more sustainable consumption patterns and to work towards establishing efficient and appropriate economic and trading systems.
Pacific governments should examine international agreements, to see how they will affect agricultural, forestry and fishing production in their
countries. Similarly, preferential trade agreements made between groups of countries may also impact on Pacific agricultural, forestry and fisheries
production and the environment.. Developed countries or governments in countries that provide potential markets may take measures making it
difficult to export our surplus products. Pacific island countries will need to closely examine the impact of international agreements on agricultural, forestry and marine exports. We recommend that before signing conventions/agreements, governments should see to it that any conditions imposed do not adversely affect Pacific agriculture, forestry and fisheries or threaten the fragile environment.
We recognise the important focus on food production at the World Food Summit. We recommend that equal emphasis be placed on issues of food
access and distribution, especially for the most disadvantaged communities and the most vulnerable of the small island nations. The rural and urban
poor must have access to sufficient food for sustainable livelihood. Rural producers of food and forest resources, especially women, must have
ownership of productive assets such as land, and access to credit and appropriate technology. Continued efforts should be made to increase food
production through, for example, increased rural credit, small scale irrigation schemes and agricultural experimentation and extension services.
We recognize the need to monitor the impact of commercial development on the environment and on food security. We are concerned too at the
growing export market orientation of our primary production; the meeting wishes to highlight the roles of farmers and fisherman as primary and
subsistence producers and consumers, who are thus the real pillars of Pacific food security.
Population, food production and environmental protection are all integral to sustainable development. We recommend, therefore, a comprehensive and interdisciplinary planning approach towards human development which would link international agencies, governments, the private sector and civil society in their mutually supporting roles. This must be supported through concerted educational efforts to raise public awareness and to empower all our peoples to stand for the principles that promote sustainable human development.
OUR PLEDGE
We reiterate our belief that rapid population growth provides the greatest threat to food security and we individually pledge to play an advocacy role in our own countries to support national policies, legislation and actions that will promote sustainable population growth and development.
We pledge our support for international efforts to address issues of concern to our region. Apart from the World Food Summit we will be guided
in our population and development initiatives by action programmes to which many of our countries are signatories, including the International
Conference on Population and Development, the World Summit on Children, the UN Conference on Environment and Development, the International
Conference on Nutrition and the International Conference on Women.
For the attainment of the above, we underline self-reliance, while, at the same time, we appreciate commitments from our development partners.
We pledge our commitment as Pacific island parliamentarians to share our experiences and resources in working together to meet and resolve our
common challenges in the areas of population, environment and food security. We will, therefore, to this end, take measures to establish a Pacific Parliamentary Assembly for Population and Development.