Sostenibilidad

Precision agriculture: a likely answer to Climate Change and Food Security. Is it accessible for everyone?

• Project A is a dike that costs $90 million to build, prevents on average $15 million of losses per year.
• Project B is also a dike, a little more expensive, it costs $100 million to build.

The Annual Conference of the International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA) is the only international, interdisciplinary conference dedicated to the art and science of impact assessment. The IAIA17 Conference, hosted this year in Montréal, Canada, gives us an opportunity to share information, best practices, success stories, innovations, and lessons learned with delegates from all over the world.

Consultations are institutional mechanisms embedded in many Inter-American Development Bank’s (IDB) safeguards which consider the views of the stakeholders involved in its operations. They also represent an opportunity to build consensus on goals, and promote the engagement of beneficiaries to help them achieve environmental and social sustainability. The advantages of carrying out public consultations are usually clear. Nevertheless, their implementation in complex socioeconomic and cultural contexts can pose major challenges.

The world population is expected to increase to almost 10 billion people in 2050, and securing the supply of wood and timber from sustainable sources without competing for agricultural land and food production has already become a challenge in many parts of the world. In recent decades’ export-oriented industrial agriculture has become the main driver of South American land use patterns, increasing the pressure for more efficient and intensive production systems.

“They thought that the bullet would silence us. But they failed… weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.” – Malala Yousafzai, speaking at the UN on her 16th birthday