MARIO LUBETKIN
THE GLOBALfood security crisis reveals an increase in the undernourishment prevalence, reaching higher than in 2015, when countries first agreed to eradicate hunger by 2030 as one of the SDG targets.
In the Caribbean, between 2014 and 2021, hunger increased by 2.3 percentage points, affecting 16.4 per cent of its population by 2021. Moreover, the Caribbean is a net importer of almost all the main food groups such as cereals, dairy products, fruits and vegetables (except the Dominican Republic), meat and vegetable oils.
This region is highly vulnerable to extreme events, climate variability and climate change. Increasingly extreme weather events, shifting rainfall patterns, rising temperatures, recurrent drought and floods, among others, pose an unprecedented threat that can cause substantial socio-economic and environmental loss and damage.
The recent 44th Regular Meeting of the Caricom Heads of Government, chaired by the Bahamas, highlighted some of the main challenges affecting food production in the region. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations has strengthened a special focus to implement joint strategies to support the Caribbean countries' priorities and discuss new ways for the Caribbean to transform agri-food systems.
For the first time, the FAO was invited to address this important discussion during the 17th Special Session of the Caricom Council for Foreign and Community Relations (COFCOR). The FAO recognised Caricom's great efforts to implement the agri-food systems strategy in member states to help achieve the reduction of the Caribbean's large food imports bill by 25 per cent by 2025.
The organisation is supporting the development of priority value chains to contribute to reducing the region's food import bill. It is doing so by working with governments and key stakeholders in designing and upgrading strategies, as well as good practices and opportunities for attracting investment to help boost intra-regional trade.
In this frame, the heads of government of Caricom have also supported the project proposal 'Building Food Security through Innovation, Resilience, Sustainability and Empowerment' presented by Guyana; and the FAO is working closely with the member states to promote a climate finance mobilisation strategy to fund innovative initiatives such as novel animal feed, optimising greenhouses, soil and land mapping.
The FAO supports governments and communities in building capacities to comprehensively manage multi-hazard risks to enhance the resilience of livelihoods and value chains.
It is crucial to increase and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of investments across the agri-food system. In this regard, the FAO, together with the Caricom Private Sector Organization, agreed to pursue collaboration to enhance intra-regional trade and private sector investment in the Caribbean to trigger agriculture sector growth.
On the other hand, the last Summit of Heads of State and Governments of the Community of Latin American and C
