A/HRC/12/31* page 11 agriculture and the right to food in his contributions to the interactive thematic dialogue of the General Assembly on the global food crisis and the right to food (New York, 6 April 2009) and the seventeenth session of the Commission on Sustainable Development (New York, 4 to 15 May 2009). The Commission adopted a declaration in which it recognized that sustainable agricultural practices and sustainable forest management could contribute to meeting climate change concerns and that sustainable soil, land, livestock, forest, biodiversity and water management practices and resilient crops were essential. It also called for the creation of an enabling environment for sustainable agriculture. 18. The development of more sustainable farming approaches is directly linked to the right to food. Agricultural productivity depends on the services rendered by ecosystems. Unless from being one of the main causes of climate change and soil degradation it is turned into a net contributor to the maintenance of the environment, agricultural production will undergo a significant decline in the future. Just like its availability, the accessibility of food depends on how it is produced. The more food production relies on oil, the more food commodities will be vulnerable to price shocks. The price of oil influences not only fertilizer costs and freight rates, but also the demand for agrofuels, which in turn exacerbates the competition for land, water and capital between the production of food and the production of fuel. By contrast, more sustainable forms of agriculture could better meet the needs of small-scale farmers. Low external input agriculture, polycropping and the use of green technologies limit the dependency of these farmers on the price of external inputs, thus improving the stability of incomes and avoiding the risk of debt spirals following a poor harvest. Finally, agro-ecological forms of production rely essentially on increasing knowledge-sharing among farmers through processes that are participatory, involving affected vulnerable groups, in order to identify the solutions best-suited to their specific circumstances and their complex environments. Such approaches are therefore empowering and mobilizing. B. Disciplining large-scale land acquisitions or leases 19. In the past three to four years, private investors and Governments have shown a growing interest in the acquisition or long-term lease of large portions of farmland, mostly in the developing world and particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, where underused arable land exists in large quantities. The development of large-scale land leases or acquisitions can be explained by (a) the rush towards the production of agrofuels, encouraged by fiscal incentives and subsidies in developed countries; (b) population growth and urbanization, combined with the exhaustion of natural resources in certain countries, where large-scale land acquisitions are seen as a means to achieve long-term food security; (c) increased demand for certain raw commodities from tropical countries, particularly fibre and other wood products; and (d) the subsidies expected for carbon storage through plantation and avoided deforestation.12 While this phenomenon is not entirely new, it has accelerated since the onset of the global food crisis. A number of resource-poor but cash-rich countries have turned to large-scale acquisitions 12 This is particularly the case under the Clean Development Mechanism provided for in article 12 of the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.