Ministers from Asia and the Pacific countries on Friday in Jakarta called for strengthening regional cooperation to face common challenges to achieve food and livelihood security and rural development.

Anton Apriantono, Chairman of the 28th Regional Conference of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) for Asia and the Pacific Region, told a joint press conference that the challenges could be countered by addressing issues such as food vulnerability, transboundary animal diseases and regional vulnerability towards natural disaster.

Anton, who is also Indonesian Minister of Agriculture, said the delegates issued a ministerial joint statement called "The Jakarta Ministerial Statement on Regional Partnership".

In the statement, the ministers agreed to strengthen efforts on economic reconstruction in Asia and on food security and poverty alleviation, to reduce vulnerability towards natural disasters and to promote a livelihood approach towards post-natural disaster rehabilitation and reconstruction.

At the press conference, Assistant-Director of FAO for Asia and the Pacific Region He Changchui said that the ministers were strongly committed to achieving the target of World Food Summit on the Millennium Development Goals to reduce by a half the undernourished and poor people by 2015.

He said despite very rapid economic development in this region, there were still more than 850 millions people in hunger in the world, 540 million of whom lived in Asia and the Pacific region.

"This is really, really unacceptable," said He.

The conference also emphasized the need for additional resources by the government and international community to assist agriculture, forestry and fishery development.

The FAO's meeting was held here from Monday to Friday, on which, agricultural ministers and senior officials from 46 Asia-Pacific countries reviewed the state of agriculture and food security. The topics ranged from food security, poverty alleviation, bird flu prevention, natural disaster containment, pesticide management, transboundary animal disease prevention to bioenergy development.

Source: Xinhua