Nordic region safeguards food supplies
The Nordic countries have put in place a range of measures to safeguard global food supplies. Climate change poses a threat to food supplies, particularly in poorer parts of the world. Important crops are vulnerable to, amongst other things, desertification and flooding.
“One key Nordic objective is to safeguard global food supplies through the conservation and sustainable utilisation of genetic resources in agriculture” writes Halldór Ásgrímsson, Secretary General of the Nordic Council of Ministers in an article in the online news website EU Observer.
Ásgrímsson points to co-operation with gene banks in Africa and Central Asia and the global seed vault in Svalbard managed by the Nordic countries. A great many countries in the world have already sent seed samples to Svalbard for storage.
Ásgrímsson has written this article before the 17th session of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development CSD-17 to be held in New York in May. The agenda will include for example Africa, agriculture and desertification and the Nordic countries will present their solutions for safeguarding global food supplies.
