BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - THE Federation is set to benefit from a US$1.2 million project that is geared toward assisting nine territories to promote sustainable agriculture in the Caribbean with assistance from the United Nations Green Climate Fund, the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA).
IICA noted that the project, which would be implemented in The Bahamas, Belize, Dominica, Haiti, Saint and Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago, aims to increase the engagement of the agriculture sector in climate action and planning.
The Hemispheric body explained that it would also assist in developing analysis and capacities for evidence-based decision-making and to identify good practices, methodologies and technologies to boost agricultural resilience.
“The initiative has received close to USD 1.2 million in funding from the United Nations Green Climate Fund. It will focus on the development of capacities, strategic frameworks, knowledge management, and learning, in a bid to strengthen the base upon which the Caribbean agriculture sector can prioritize investments for resilience,” IICA noted.
Manuel Otero, Director General of IICA said: “Agriculture should be part of the solution and we must support the countries of the Caribbean in generating the conditions that will allow them to be more resilient to climate change while ensuring an adequate and quality food supply for their people.”
Primary project beneficiaries will be farmers, civil society and non-governmental organisations, agricultural technical officers, governments, entrepreneurs and Caribbean youth, among others.
Moreover, the project is seeking to create a roadmap to improve reports on greenhouse gas emissions in specific agricultural value chains, thus facilitating the defining of measures to address them, IICA said.
Kelly Witkowski, Manager of IICA’s Climate Change, Natural Resources and Management of Production Risks Program, indicated that “the scope of these key objectives will assist in channeling additional resources to support the climate change response of the Caribbean agriculture sector, which is a source of income for thousands of families, but one which is also extremely vulnerable to climate conditions. We will also aim to identify investment priorities and foster cooperation among countries to build more resilient food systems”.
