what is CAPSA? what is WFP?

CAPSA stands for Centre for Alleviation of Poverty through Sustainable Agriculture, part of ECSAP or The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific. ECSAP is the regional development arm of the United Nations for the Asia-Pacific region. With a membership of 62 Governments, 58 of which are in the region, and a geographical scope that stretches from Turkey in the west to the Pacific island nation of Kiribati in the east, and from the Russian Federation in the north to New Zealand in the south, ESCAP is the most comprehensive of the United Nations five regional commissions. It is also the largest United Nations body serving the Asia-Pacific region with over 600 staff.
Established in 1947 with its headquarters in Bangkok, Thailand, ESCAP seeks to overcome some of the region’s greatest challenges. It carries out work in the following areas:

• Macroeconomic Policy and Development
• Statistics
• Subregional activities for development
• Trade and Investment
• Transport
• Environment and sustainable development
• Information and Communications Technology and Disaster Risk Reduction
• Social Development

(Taken from: http://www.unescap.org)

CAPSA itself is the subsidiary body of the ESCAP, based in Bogor, Indonesia. CAPSA was founded in 1981 as the CGPRT Centre (The Regional Co-ordination Centre for Research and Development of Coarse Grains, Pulses, Roots and Tuber Crops in the Humid Tropics of Asia and the Pacific). To reflect on the shift of its mission, during the sixty-sixth Commission session in May 2010 ESCAP member states adopted the decision to rename the Centre to Centre for Alleviation of Poverty through Sustainable Agriculture (CAPSA).

Vision

CAPSA's vision is an Asia and Pacific region free of hunger and poverty, where policymakers base their decisions and investment allocations on sound science that reflects the needs and perspectives of the rural poor, especially those who depend on agriculture for their livelihoods.

Goal

CAPSA's goal is to reduce poverty and enhance food security in Asia and the Pacific by promoting sustainable agriculture.

Objectives

• Enhanced national capacity for socioeconomic and policy research on sustainable agriculture for poverty reduction and food security
• Enhanced regional co-ordination and networking to successfully scale up and scale out research findings that have implications for policy design and implementation related to sustainable agriculture and rural development
• Enhanced capacity of policymakers and senior government officials to design and implement policies to achieve rural development, poverty reduction and food security through sustainable agriculture in Asia and the Pacific

(Taken from: http://www.uncapsa.org)


Yesterday, I attended a lecture given by Dr. Upali Wickramasinghe as the Regional Adviser on Poverty Reduction and Food Security in CAPSA. It was very amazingly useful for me and us as a students who learn nutritional science :D


Here's the brief report about the lecture,
entitled: Sustainable agriculture for poverty reduction

Food security: undernourished people, 925 million in the world, southeast Asia has the biggest problems

Vulnerability to climate change is the reality now: decreasing length of growing period, decrease in reliable crop growing, rise in max tempt, change in rainfall/rainy day: areas sensitive to climate change

Vulnerability: spread if diseases à avian influenza outbreaks

Vulnerability: markets and institutions à price reliability: rice prices

Sustainability in terms of food production and how it relates to agriculture in the future that can be predicted: population growth à will be in amount 9.00 billion in 2050, now at 6.00-7.00 billion

Demands of foods: future scenario: income will also grow along with population will also grow, the poorer will still be poor and the demands of food will increase significantly (70%). How will we fulfill it?

Potential crop expansion: Latin American and sub-Saharan is the highest

Irrigation and water resources that have renewable water resources: Latin American and Carribean

Forest cover has decline so much in Indonesia

Sustainable agriculture for poverty reduction

In agriculture: current practices are continued without undermining the regenerative capacity of the biodiversity, such as soil or water

Three dimensions/aspects of sustainable agriculture: environmental, economic, and social

Agriculture’s impact: soil depletion, water scarcity, habitat loss

Major causes: expansion crop production and food mechanization, substitution pesticides for labor: pesticide residue in food, increasing livestock (ammonia emission), land clearing that caused by deforestation


The silver lining is.. need the sustainable system in agriculture to overcome the poverty, if it's not us.. then who else will? :)


cheers,
busaski