The Food and Agri­cul­tur­al Or­ga­ni­za­tion of the Unit­ed Na­tions (FAO) and the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment have hand­ed over five tablet com­put­ers to the Di­vi­sion of Food Se­cu­ri­ty, Nat­ur­al Re­sources, the En­vi­ron­ment and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment, as part of the Project “Im­prov­ing the mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem for cli­mate change im­pacts on the agri­cul­ture sec­tor in Trinidad and To­ba­go”.

The project is part of readi­ness ac­tiv­i­ties for ac­cess­ing Green Cli­mate Fund (GCF) re­sources for ad­dress­ing cli­mate change.

The project, which be­gan in Jan­u­ary 2020 and ends in No­vem­ber 2022 fo­cus­es on the col­lec­tion of im­por­tant base­line da­ta and in­for­ma­tion that would be use­ful for fu­ture de­ci­sion-mak­ing on cli­mate change pri­or­i­ties in the agri­cul­ture sec­tor and there­fore, pro­vides a ba­sis for con­cept note and pro­pos­al de­vel­op­ment for cli­mate change ac­tions.

There­fore, time­ly and ac­cu­rate da­ta will be crit­i­cal and the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of this ini­tia­tive will be nec­es­sary post-project.

FAO Rep­re­sen­ta­tive (Trinidad & To­ba­go and Suri­name) Reuben Robert­son not­ed that ef­fec­tive plan­ning re­quires valid da­ta and the new dig­i­tal tools are en­ablers to strength­en the process.

Key ob­jec­tives of this readi­ness project are (1) to de­vel­op a frame­work for the col­lec­tion and analy­sis of agri­cul­tur­al and as­so­ci­at­ed ac­tiv­i­ty da­ta - in­clud­ing hy­dro­log­i­cal and me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal da­ta (2) to build the ca­pac­i­ty of key stake­hold­ers to use agri­cul­tur­al, hy­dro­log­i­cal and me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal da­ta to im­prove re­silience to cli­mate change, through the de­vel­op­ment of a data­base with mo­bile da­ta col­lec­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ty.

An Ar­cGIS data­base, which will be launched soon, al­lows for the stor­age and analy­sis of cli­mate and agri­cul­ture da­ta. The web­page will present avail­able da­ta to all stake­hold­ers in­clud­ing farm­ers and non­govern­men­tal or­ga­ni­za­tions.

FAOR (TT & Suriname) Reuben Robertson, Secretary for Food Security, Natural Resources, the Environment and Sustainable Development, Nathisha Charles-Pantin and Head, Multilateral Environmental Agreements Unit, Ministry of Planning and Development Kishan Kumarsingh at the handover in Tobago.

For the field da­ta col­lec­tion, pa­per-based forms have been con­vert­ed to dig­i­tal forms in KoBoTool­box. Us­ing the forms on Tablets, mo­bile da­ta col­lec­tion on farm­ers, crop/live­stock pro­duc­tion and prices can be ac­com­plished eas­i­ly and up­loaded in­to a data­base.

Al­so, un­der the project, two da­ta col­lec­tors have been hired to as­sist with da­ta col­lec­tion over the next few months in To­ba­go.

A two-day train­ing ses­sion will be con­duct­ed with Agri­cul­ture Of­fi­cers, Ex­ten­sion Of­fi­cers and Da­ta Col­lec­tors to en­sure knowl­edge trans­fer.

The Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment is the chief im­ple­menter of the project and the Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­ga­ni­za­tion of the Unit­ed Na­tions (FAO/UN) is the De­liv­ery Part­ner (DP).

Key project part­ners in­clude the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries; the Na­tion­al Agri­cul­tur­al Mar­ket­ing and De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (NAMDE­V­CO); the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA); the Wa­ter Re­sources Agency (WRA); the Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TTMS) and the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO).