SVG to lead on Resilient Livelihoods Programme

St Vincent and the Grenadines has been named as one of two countries in the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) that would provide leadership in a programme that aims among other things, to contribute to food security.

Its the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal’s (SDG)- Fund Joint Programme, “Resilient livelihoods and food security through data, digitalization and sectoral linkages” which has been approved for implementation. The Joint Programme (JP), will be led by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and implemented jointly with the World Food Programme (WFP) and under the overall leadership of the governments of the Commonwealth of Dominica and St Vincent and the Grenadines.

The Joint Programme (JP) aims to contribute to resilient livelihoods and food security through data, digitalization and sectoral linkages.

The two year programme will draw on the power of data, information systems and sectoral linkages to mitigate the impacts of climate change and related shocks at the household, community and national levels, promote and protect food security, livelihoods and strengthen resilience in a gender-responsive manner. The transformational feature of the JP and the main difference from the conventional approach to data collection is that it will utilize multi-stakeholder partnerships and recent advances in information and communication technologies to repurpose available and new data. The repurposing of data will help to improve the design, execution and evaluation of social protection and agriculture programmes targeting marginalized groups, a release states.

The SDG-F JP will benefit the marginalized and vulnerable groups to include women, children, girls, youth, persons with disabilities, older persons, indigenous people, rural workers, and persons affected by (HIV/AIDS). The JP will also target small-scale farmers, artisanal fishers, and [micro] and value chain actors.

The JP will simultaneously improve the awareness and access of vulnerable people and communities to available social protection programmes and agriculture risk management practices/ technologies and help them to make better choices by accessing more information and knowledge.

Specifically, the anticipated results of the JP are that:
Communities most vulnerable to impacts of climate change benefit from improved early warning, risk and vulnerability data and geospatial information systems, which include linkages to agricultural, disaster risk management and social protection policies, systems and financing, thereby accelerating achievement of SDGs 1, 2, 5, 13, 17.

Secondly digital data systems, assessments and national registries on farmers, fishers and vulnerable households are enhanced, including protocols for their use in the event of shocks in order to advance and protect livelihoods, food security and development/recovery gains and ensure no one is left behind.

Third, some of the most vulnerable farmer/fisher households enhance their resilience and food security through improved linkages between agricultural and social protection sectors, expanded market and climate information services, improved farm/fisher data, and more inclusive risk management practices (including diversification), which consider differentiated opportunities, risks and impacts facing women and men.

Regional partners will include The Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA); the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS); The Caribbean Community (CARICOM); the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI); the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA); the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH); and the University of West Indies (UWI) system.