Revising SPS-related policy and regulatory measures within a biosecurity framework may be one option for promoting cross-sectoral interventions, as is increased international support for domestic application of food safety measures in developing countries.

8. IPRs may undermine research and use of AKST to meet development and sustainability goals. Even though license agreements may promote technology transfer by clarifying roles and responsibilities in some cases, policy mechanisms are needed to protect and remunerate traditional knowledge and genetic resources used to develop industrialized products. Even though IPRs have a role in a commercial approach to innovation, in many countries it is the public sector research institutions that promote the introduction of IPRs in agriculture. This promotion may be at odds with the public tasks of contributing to poverty alleviation and household nutrition security. Reliance on IPR based revenues is likely to lead to a change in public research priorities from development to business opportunities, e.g., commercial crops like maize and oil crops at the cost of research on small grains and pulses.

9. Climate mitigation options employing the agricultural sectors are not well covered under current national and international policy instruments. A much more comprehensive agreement is needed that looks forward into the future if we want to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by agriculture and forestry sectors. Achieving this could be accomplished through, among other measures, a negotiated global long-term (30- 50 years), comprehensive and equitable regulatory framework with differentiated responsibilities and intermediate targets. Within such a framework there could be a modified Clean Development Mechanism, with a comprehensive set of eligible agricultural mitigation activities, including: afforestation and reforestation; avoided deforestation, using a national sectoral approach rather than a project approach to minimize issues of leakage, thus allowing for policy interventions; and a wide range of agricultural practices including zero/reduced-till, livestock and rice paddy management. Other approaches include reducing agricultural subsidies that promote GHG emissions and mechanisms that encourage and support adaptation, particularly in vulnerable regions such as in the tropics and subtropics.

7.1 Natural Resources and Global Environmental Change

"We are moving now into new, post-industrial, third-generation agriculture (TGA). The challenge for TGA is to combine the technological efficiency of second-generation agriculture with the lower environmental impacts of firstgeneration agriculture. . . . Policy tools, many of which are now available, must be further developed and integrated. Through a combination of regulation against pollution and degradation, the creation of markets for public goods through the rural development regulation, and enabling and educating consumers to opt for goods produced to high environmental standards, the environmental benefits of agriculture could be delivered to a high level alongside out-

puts of food and fibre." (Buckwell and Armstrong-Brown, 2004)

7.1.1. Resources, processes of change and policies The broad history of the relation between natural resources, i.e., the natural world, and agriculture has been one of a slow transition from small patches of agriculture in a surrounding matrix of natural habitat, to one of small patches of natural habitat embedded in a matrix of agricultural or otherwise human influenced land. This trend is likely to continue at the global level over the next 50 years.

     There is an obvious, but in fact poorly quantified, twoway interaction between agricultural land and natural systems. This interaction has changed significantly as the global "footprint" of agriculture has expanded. Natural systems provide "services" to agriculture both as sources of environmental goods (provisioning services) and also as sinks (regulating services), while agriculture often acts as a driver in natural resource degradation. Natural systems provide not only environmental goods and provisioning and regulating services. In Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) terms, the most critical services natural systems provide to agriculture are "supporting services," such as nutrient cycling and pollination. Over the past 50 years, agriculture has gone from being a relatively minor source of off-site environmental degradation to becoming a major contributor to natural resource depletion and degradation, acting through habitat loss and fragmentation, invasive alien species, unsustainable use (over harvesting), pollution (especially of aquatic systems) and, increasingly, climate change.

      Policy responses to this trend toward natural resource degradation have occurred at international, regional and local levels. An essential component of all necessary policy reforms for mitigating agricultural impacts is to integrate environmental, natural resource, and biodiversity concerns into policy making at the highest possible level in order to achieve the necessary facilitation and leverage on lower-level policies. For example, in the European Union the revised EU Sustainable Development Strategy (EU-SDS II) includes biodiversity conservation, but still lacks an overarching commitment to reduction in drivers that other sectoral policies could then address in more detail within the stronger mandate provided by EUSDS II. Further revision of the EUSDS could provide better integration of the EU's internal and global commitments (WSSD, Doha and Monterrey) and provide better harmonization between different European sustainable development processes (Cardiff, Lisbon, Gothenburg and Johannesburg) and instruments (Extended Impact Assessment and Indicators for Sustainable Development). High level integration can also be achieved, to some extent, via Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs), for example through the agreed Programme of Work for Agricultural Biodiversity of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

      The CBD Agricultural Biodiversity work program focuses on (1) assessing the status and trends of the world's agricultural biodiversity and of their underlying causes, as well as of local knowledge of its management, (2) identifying and promoting adaptive-management practices, technologies, policies and incentives, (3) promoting the conservation and sustainable use of genetic resources of actual/potential value