Concerted Effort Needed To Combat Risk In Agri Sectors
THIS IS ESSENTIAL IN PROMOTING GOOD ADAPTATION PRACTICES
Aconcerted effort is needed to disaggregate or ‘downscale’ climate risk data to understand the location specific risks in Agriculture sectors. This is essential in promoting good adaptation practices.
Applying these collective goals of adaptation and long-term resiliency can lead to improvements towards the boarder goal of sustainability and economic growth particularly in our productive sectors. These were the views of the Minister for Agriculture, Rural and Maritime Development and National Disaster Management Inia Seruiratu at the Capacity Building Workshop at Tanoa International in Nadi yesterday.
“The foundation of this synergy is rooted in the knowledge and understanding of the climate risk. “With innovations in climate outlook and seasonal forecasting, in combination with near real-time satellite information and ground-based data, a system of monitoring and early warning can be made more effective to address adaptation and resilience needs.” The Minister praised the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and Pacific Community (SPC) as an ideal combination to facilitate the learning from Asia to Pacific and vice-versa. ESCAP had already successfully piloted a number of resilient projects in agriculture in Asia through its collaborating partner, the Regional Integrated Multi-hazard Early Warning Systems for Africa and Asia; including innovations like the Monsoon Forums and Climate Field schools.
“It is time to put our efforts together in learning how to adapt these innovations in the particular context of Pacific SIDS,” he added. “The workshop is addressing a complement of mainstreaming starting from understanding the climate risk, communicating the risk specific to agriculture sector to the stakeholders and suggesting the tools and techniques for the adaptation. “This is not a standalone meeting but is the beginning of a longer regional partnership where we request ESCAP to take the outcomes of the meeting forward to build resilience in the agriculture sector in the region.”
Resilient Agriculture in the Pacific
“The initiative to host a sub-regional expert meeting in Fiji was borne out of a need to build a resilient agriculture in the Pacific, particularly in response to the growing climate variability and climate change scenarios that we all have been facing in recent years.
“In Asia and the Pacific, building resilience is not a question of choice, but rather a collective imperative. He added their goal is to find a mechanism that could deliver on the ground technical assistance to implement resilient and sustainable agriculture practices in the Pacific SIDS. “We wanted to accomplish this through south-south cooperation and sharing learning experiences and adaptive practices between Asia and the Pacific,” he said.
“The collective idea was to create a stronger, more productive agriculture sector using a two pronged strategy that focussed both on medium term adaptation and long term resilience to stem impacts of disasters.”
Pacific Agricultural Ministerial Conference
The Pacific Agricultural Ministerial Conference would be held in Vanuatu next year. “This is an expert group meeting, we have to take the results from this meeting forward to the practitioners and build their capacity to implement these strategies at the ground level. “We need to develop a network of stakeholders between practitioners of resilient agriculture in the Pacific and in Asia to share knowledge and strategies that will enhance south-south cooperation in the region. “Transitioning from expert dialogue to capacity development, we request ESCAP to develop further training that will give us the valuable tools and technical capacity building to truly mainstream disaster risk reduction in the agricultural sector.