Bringing about sustainable socio-economic developments in any society is an enormous task and requires mobilization of a wide-range of stakeholders in all sectors and on all levels. Politics in this context is of central importance for turning sustainability to reality especially in developing countries.
Uganda recognized the importance of green politics in 2006 where Pilot International (http://www.pilot-int.org/index.html) was founded, by ROBINAH K. NANYUNJA (Full BIO: http://www.robinahknanyunja.com/robk/?page_id=38, the President General, Ecological Party and Uganda’s Green Party. The mission is to promote global sustainable development for the benefit of humanity and the planet, advocate peace, security, unity, preservation of the environment and ecosystem for socio-economic development. The Green ideology of Pilot International rests on solidarity that can be expressed in three parts: Solidarity with all the people of the world; Solidarity with animals, nature and the ecological system; Solidarity with future generations. For more information on this Political Platform, please, visit:
http://www.robinahknanyunja.com/robk/?page_id=16
ROBINAH K. NANYUNJA is currently a Guest Blogger at “sustain-earth”
H A V – Health Added Value
Using and processing agricultural foodstuffs all of us have to know their influence about our health, both for every person and whole society and this valuation ought to be used as guide for every economic choice.
In fact, every unhealthy and unsustainable farming engrave hard on Added Value of every farm and territorial settlement because this increase of costs for the biggest health services reduce the utility of agricultural production, both for the public and private economy.
Therefore I propose to weigh up this index subtracting the biggest cost of health services from Added Value of the agricultural foodstuffs, value cut back by every unhealthy and unsustainable technology of production, and to use it for every economic and political choices about environmental policy of farming: the best name of index should be Health Added Value (HAV as acronym).
Both for physical and environmental damage, caused by agricultural foodstuffs, the appraisal of this HAV ought to set a relationship between growing technology and its influence on natural environment and human health, also guarantying public assets with regards to the “Conditionality”, monitored by the European Integrated Check Control and used for application of economic sanctions to agricultural firms which don’t abide by respect good farming rules and the environment in general.
This system is one of pillars of the Agricultural Community Policy whoses rules could be useful to appraise a bigger deduction to gross proceeds of agricultural foodstuffs proportional to negative impact about the health of consumers, using reductive parameters of the payments for farmers who should break analogous rules of Regulation n. 73/09 of European Economic Community, yearly updated.
Renato Domenico Orsini, Italian Agronomist / People of Massa Martana
Renato, many thanks for your extremely important comment, I absolutely agree with you. It is unfortunate that many of the world population are exposed to increasing environmental threats that are related to not only the agricultural sector but also the production from ecological and aquatic systems, e.g. the fish. These threats have to be taken seriously as consumers worldwide have limited access to what sort of toxic compounds exist in the food we are eating and their impacts on health. “Food and beverage” available in the global market have to be marked with the levels of pollutants and toxic compounds. Consumers ought to have access to the quality of “food and beverage” and it is the producers that should be responsible for providing such information. As is the case for medical and pharmaceutical drugs, all “food and beverage” should be labeled by certified and clear information on any side effects related to elevated levels of pollutants and toxic compounds. It is not acceptable that consumers should be exposed to unknown threats and health risks that are related to available “food and beverage” products. It is, also, not acceptable as well that consumers run away from normal/traditional “food and beverage” to the so-called ecological and organic products, because of fear and threats. The so-called ecological and organic “food and beverage” are labeled either by certified data on the levels of pollutants and toxic compounds, how do we know and how can we judge the quality of such foodstuff that is supposed to be healthy for us. In some market studies about 50% of bottled water, in the market of one African country, exceeded to allowed levels of contaminants, this is probably the case in other countries. This is a political question that should have the highest priority to protect the environment from the negative impacts of technology and its influence on human health, life quality on earth and bio-diversity.