sustainable development 20 years on from the ... - José Eli da Veiga

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Lastly, climate factors are also becoming increasingly important in terms of food security, the
profitability of farming and the well-being of people living in rural areas. The effects of climate change
on agriculture, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture will be discussed further in chapter II.
Sustainable agricultural practices call for more efficient and responsible management of inputs
such as fertilizers, pesticides and water; other practices such as conservation of the soil and its nutrients
through crop rotation, periods of fallow and use of agroforest systems as alternatives to integrated pest
management; and the introduction of associated cropping. Similarly, it is important to promote
agroecological production among small farmers, as this can raise crop yields in places where hunger and
undernutrition are the main problems (DeSchutter, <strong>20</strong>10). Higher yields increase family income and are
an effective means of ensuring food security. By encouraging production in plots with a variety of
associated crops, agroecological practices help to conserve ecosystems and increase the resilience of local
populations to the impacts of climate change.
(c)
Manufacturing
The region has made considerable headway since the 1990s in developing regulations on
atmospheric and waterborne industrial emissions and waste, although it still lags somewhat behind
developed countries with regard to environmental regulation as a whole. Some progress is also now
beginning to be made in the introduction of environmental assessment tools (cost-benefit analyses) and
policy instruments involving the use of economic incentives (see chapter II). The steps taken to open up the
region’s economies since the 1990s and the arrival and expansion of transnational companies have also
contributed to the adoption of international standards with respect to environmental management practices.
One factor that has been quite influential in promoting cleaner production processes in various
sectors, especially in Central America, has been the inclusion of provisions covering such practices in free
trade treaties. Certification is another way in which the market can differentiate between companies that
use more <strong>sustainable</strong> production practices and those that do not. The United Nations Industrial
Development Organization (UNIDO), in cooperation with UNEP, has supported the establishment and
operation of national cleaner production centres. UNEP estimates that there were 15 such centres in the
region in <strong>20</strong>09 (UNEP/CEGESTI, <strong>20</strong>09).
One of the challenges facing the sector is to find a better way of integrating industrial and trade
policy with environmental policy so that it can promote innovative, <strong>sustainable</strong> production patterns while
at the same time protecting jobs. Environmental management in small and medium-sized manufacturing
enterprises raises additional difficulties because of such ventures’ financial and technological constraints.
The use of economic instruments for environmental management purposes will be examined in chapter II,
while private-sector initiatives for attaining sustainability, many of which concern the industrial sector,
will be discussed in chapter III.
Apart from production processes per se, the nature of the goods that are produced and the
industrial structure itself are also important factors. For example, the production of automobiles and
petrochemicals tends to make consumption patterns more rigid and, from the standpoint of economic
<strong>development</strong>, these types of production decisions tend to override decisions about, for example, public
expenditure. In addition, the region’s governments do not oblige these industries to assume the full cost of
the infrastructure that they need in order to operate (roads, highways, etc.) but instead shoulder a
considerable share of those costs themselves.