Bridgetown–Dur­ing re­cent mis­sions to St Lu­cia and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, the head of the Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­ga­ni­za­tion's (FAO) op­er­a­tions in the Caribbean for­mal­ly signed liveli­hood re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and re­silience build­ing as­sis­tance to­talling US$630,000.The as­sis­tance, giv­en in re­sponse to re­quests from the gov­ern­ments of the two coun­tries, will fa­cil­i­tate re­cov­ery ef­forts in the af­ter­math of se­vere weath­er brought on by a low-pres­sure trough which passed through the re­gion in De­cem­ber.

From De­cem­ber 23 to 25, tor­ren­tial rains and high winds gen­er­at­ed by the trough great­ly af­fect­ed St Lu­cia and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines and led to over­flow­ing rivers and flash flood­ing which caused wide­spread in­fra­struc­ture dam­age. The agri­cul­ture sec­tor–in­clud­ing live­stock, root and veg­etable crops, fish­eries and forestry–was hard­est hit, with many small-scale farm­ers com­plete­ly los­ing their liveli­hoods.

In speak­ing about the as­sis­tance, sub­re­gion­al co-or­di­na­tor for FAO in the Caribbean, Dr JR Deep Ford, laud­ed the na­tion­al emer­gency re­sponse ef­forts in each coun­try, in­di­cat­ing that their ground­work had en­abled FAO's abil­i­ty to rapid­ly de­ploy. He al­so spoke about the in­ter­ven­tions hav­ing been care­ful­ly de­signed to en­sure that farm­ers would not on­ly re­cov­er but would be giv­en a de­vel­op­men­tal boost for their en­ter­pris­es.

The as­sis­tance will be de­liv­ered in two ways. First­ly it will en­able the prompt re­sump­tion of agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion through emer­gency pro­vi­sion of in­puts, such as seeds, plant­i­ng ma­te­r­i­al, fer­til­iz­er and ba­by chicks to af­fect­ed farm­ers.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, giv­en the fre­quen­cy of ad­verse cli­mate im­pacts on the re­gion, an FAO ex­pert will al­so car­ry out an eval­u­a­tion of Dis­as­ter Risk Man­age­ment (DRM) sys­tems and pro­pose ways to build re­silience in vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions by strength­en­ing the ca­pac­i­ties of in­sti­tu­tions and civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions.Ben­e­fi­cia­ries will al­so be taught dis­as­ter risk re­duc­tion agri­cul­ture prac­tices to en­sure that what is be­ing re­stored will be less af­fect­ed by fu­ture cli­mate im­pacts.

St Vin­cent

St Vin­cent and the Grenadines was most se­vere­ly hit by De­cem­ber's weath­er. Wide­spread flood­ing and land­slides led to the trag­ic loss of life and mil­lions of dol­lars in dam­age to the is­land's in­fra­struc­ture. The coun­try's agri­cul­ture sec­tor will re­ceive US$320,000 to quick­ly re­ha­bil­i­tate the liveli­hoods of af­fect­ed vul­ner­a­ble farm­ers that would oth­er­wise face food se­cu­ri­ty and liveli­hood is­sues. This ef­fort will com­ple­ment and sup­ple­ment on-go­ing na­tion­al ef­forts.

In co-or­di­na­tion with the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, In­dus­try, Forestry Fish­eries and Rur­al Trans­for­ma­tion, as­sis­tance will be pro­vid­ed for the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of agri­cul­tur­al fields and forests, clean­ing of wa­ter­ways, sta­bil­is­ing river­banks and build­ing re­silience in the com­mu­ni­ties im­pact­ed by floods, strong winds and land­slide. FAO will pro­vide sup­port to the al­most 1,000 af­fect­ed farm­ers in­clud­ing 350 small-scale crop farm­ers, 350 poul­try farm­ers and 100 pig farm­ers.

They will re­ceive agri­cul­ture in­puts in­clud­ing ba­by chicks, seedlings plant­i­ng ma­te­r­i­al and fer­til­iz­er. Sup­port will al­so be pro­vid­ed to the restora­tion of the sole poul­try hatch­ery in the coun­try which has been closed since the dis­as­ter, as well to the aqua­cul­ture sec­tor.

St Lu­cia

In St Lu­cia, pre­lim­i­nary as­sess­ment of dam­ages to the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor has shown a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on ba­nanas/plan­tains and veg­eta­bles, root and tree crops and live­stock pro­duc­tion. Drainage and ir­ri­ga­tion sys­tems were dam­aged as well as farm roads and river­banks.

FAO's US$310,000 in aid will be dis­trib­uted in co­or­di­na­tion with the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Food Pro­duc­tion, Fish­eries, Co­op­er­a­tives and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment. It will al­low both gov­ern­ment-owned for­est ar­eas and farm­ers' fields will be cleared and cleaned, and wind­break trees will be plant­ed where nec­es­sary.

400 vul­ner­a­ble farm­ers will re­ceive agri­cul­tur­al in­puts (seeds, plant­i­ng ma­te­ri­als, fer­til­iz­ers and tools) to sup­port their pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty; 30 af­fect­ed poul­try farm­ers will re­ceive ba­by chicks which will be sourced from lo­cal hatch­eries and 40 aqua­cul­ture pro­duc­ers will re­ceive 400 000 fish fin­ger­lings (shrimp and tilapia) which will be sourced from lo­cal pro­duc­tion over a phased pe­ri­od of two months.

CMC