Renewed Commitment to Agrarian Reform and Rural Development

Approximately 900 million people – three quarters of the world’s poor – live in rural areas and depend on access to land and other natural resources for their livelihoods. For most of them, insecure access to land is closely linked to poverty.

Since the World Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development in 1979, calls have repeatedly been made to help the poor gain secure access to land and to resources such as technology, credit, inputs and markets. Processes of agrarian reform have been implemented in many countries: some have succeeded, some have failed. But for millions of poor farmers, secure land access is still far from becoming a reality.

The time has come for a renewed commitment to agrarian reform and rural development, through the identification of new challenges and options for revitalizing rural communities. This is fundamental if we are to achieve the goal of reducing by half the number of poor and hungry people by 2015, as set out by the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is taking the lead in increasing this renewed international commitment by organizing in Porto Alegre, Brazil, from 7 to 10 March 2006, the International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development. The meeting will primarily serve to review different experiences of agrarian reform around the world by analysing impacts, processes, mechanisms and the actors involved, in order to develop proposals for future action.

Five main themes will be the topic of the discussion:

• policies and practises for securing and improving access to land and promoting agrarian reform;
• building local capacities to improve access to land, water, agricultural inputs and agrarian services to promote rural development and a sustainable management of natural resources;
• new opportunities to strengthen rural producers and communities;
• agrarian reform, social justice and sustainable development, and
• food sovereignty and access to resources.

For each theme an issue paper will be prepared and discussed through a participatory process of consultations, including electronic conferences. The issue papers will be presented at the ICARRD Conference.

During the four-day Conference, representatives from governments and civil society organizations will work on group thematic sessions to jointly identify the main topics that the plan for action needs to address. A round table on “Agrarian Reform, Social Justice and Sustainable Development” will be held contemporaneously and several side events are also in preparation.

The conference will come up with two concrete results:

a) a lasting Platform of understanding, learning and dialogue on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development supported by an International Observatory Panel, and

b) a range of best policies and practices and lessons learned on Agrarian Reform and rural development to promote priority actions, partnerships and international cooperation.