Close to three billion people in the developing countries will need
improved water supply and sanitation services by 1990. This is the
ambitious goal of the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade (IDWSSD). Among the major impediments to meeting this goal are a scarcity of expertise for planning good projects and the lack of globally accepted project preparation standards. The limited human and financial resources in developing countries can be used more efficiently if water and sanitation projects are initially prepared to standards meeting requirements of approving authorities and financing agencies.
Because rural incomes fluctuate from seasonto season and a multitude of risks affect income levels and consumption, poor rural househols in developping countries demand access to financial services to help stabiloize income and consumption and alleviate chronic and transitory food insecurity.
This paper presents the findings of a desk review conducted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations that found that the majority of tools used to study climate change, biodiversity or nutrition focus on only one or two of these domains and very few explicitly address all three. The same goes for policies in the three sectors. It also identified numerous entry points to improve biodiversity and diets as the two levers to improve nutrition and optimize environmental sustainability. Based on these findings, the study makes a number of recommendations for action by governments, academia, civil society, the private sector and international organizations to address these shortcomings.