The State of Food and Agriculture 2002

Agriculture, fisheries and forestry, if properly managed, can provide a series of benefits to large sections of people - benefits such as landscape conservation, watershed protection, biodiversity conservation and ecosystem stability. Some of these so-called public goods are global in nature; they benefit all or large sections of humanity. This year's report discusses some of these global public goods and calls for increased international financial flows towards agriculture and rural areas in order to promote their provision. It also examines one of the possible new mechanisms for this financing: the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) deriving from the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Particular attention is paid to the potential use of the CDM as an instrument for both enhancing carbon sequestration through land-use changes and for reducing rural poverty.