Agriculture Ministry, FAO collaborate on Disaster Risk Management in Agriculture

With the changing weather patterns and risk of disasters, early warning systems and actions to protect the Agriculture Sector remain a priority for Guyana.

With this in mind, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) conducted a two-day workshop on Early Warning Systems and Anticipatory Action for Agriculture last week at the Guyana School of Agriculture in Mon Repos, ECD.

The workshop was facilitated by Dr. Roberto Sandoval, Disaster Risk Management Specialist from FAO, and was attended by 31 officers from the MOA and sub-agencies – Hydrometeorological Service, GLDA, GRDB, NAREI, NDIA, GuySuCo, and Hope Coconut Industries.

Early warning systems are the cornerstone of any anticipatory action system. They enable countries and institutions to monitor and communicate early signs of a growing hazard and predict when and where shocks will happen. Anticipatory action is increasingly being recognized as an important approach in disaster risk management. By complementing investments in disaster risk reduction and resilience building, it can help to address vulnerability to disaster risks and protect development gains. It can protect livelihoods from the immediate effects of hazards, enhance the effectiveness of assistance, reduce the cost of emergency response, and improve the resilience of vulnerable communities over time.

At the end of the workshop, the 31 participants were able to review early warning systems for Guyana’s agricultural sector, develop a crisis timeline, and identify anticipatory actions that can be taken to reduce disaster impact on the livelihoods of farmers and fishers in Guyana. The knowledge and skills shared will also help to enhance the institutional and technical capacities within the agencies so that they can develop protocols for early warning systems and anticipatory actions.

Early Warning and Anticipatory Action protocols ensure that we have the resources and tools ready to prepare for disasters before they happen. They support actions and early warnings to help farmers, and fishers so that they can take precautionary and preventative measures to prepare for any impending disaster. Such actions will help to limit the impact on their incomes and livelihood by either harvesting crops early, storing seeds, or relocating animals to safer grounds, and fishers can secure their boats and gear to name a few.

This strengthens us as a country working together for a better environment where we can minimize agriculture loss and sustain livelihoods to ensure no one is left behind.

This two-day activity comes under the FAO/MOA project implementation “Building resilience to multiple shocks and stresses in the response and recovery from COVID-19 impacts in the Caribbean (Grenada, Guyana and St. Vincent and the Grenadines).”  In Guyana, the project targets livestock farmers with Climate-resilient practices and technologies to increase their resilience to future flood events and shocks and enhance the technical and institutional capacities of the Ministry of Agriculture to better mitigate the impacts of flood/drought and manage systemic multi-hazard risks to provide emergency and recovery assistance.