About forty international experts will meet in Bridgetown for a regional workshop entitled “Climate Finance and Support Mechanisms for a Climate Resilient Agriculture in Caribbean“, to identify discuss and identify key priorities to increase investment to support climate action for agriculture, particularly smallholder agriculture in the Caribbean region.

Agriculture is central to any debate on climate change given the enormous responsibility placed on the sector to produce 40% more food by 2050 despite changing climatic uncertainties. In the Caribbean, as smallholder agriculture is mainly rainfed thus, smallholder farmers and food security are vulnerable to the vagaries of the weather. Resilience of agriculture in the Caribbean is critical in policy and agricultural development. Increasing investment to support adaptation and resilience of agriculture has been identified as means to promote agricultural transformation and chart a path to scale up climate actions in agriculture.

However, the proportion of global finance that is committed to support climate actions in agriculture is estimated at less than 10 per cent and even much less to small holder farmers.

“Taking cognizance of the challenges of climate change to farmers in the ACP region, in its current strategy, CTA has identified climate change as one of its three programmatic intervention areas. It has been implementing projects towards Building Smallholder Farmers’ Resilience to Climate Change in Africa, Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP)” says Michael Hailu, the Director of the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) based in The Netherlands.

CTA has been working with national consultants and relevant national institutions in selected countries in the Caribbean to engage with government agencies and stakeholders on the implementation of NDCs.

“This workshop which builds on these initiatives is organized to share results and discuss the synthesis of the country case studies, encourage cross-country learning on practices to promote climate finance, discuss approaches to raise the profile of agriculture in the implementation of NDCs and identify finance mechanisms and models for co-investment from the private sector to support climate actions in agriculture” says Dr Oluyede Ajayi who is the lead Specialist on agriculture and climate change in CTA

“It is imperative to hold cross country and cross-regional dialogue to gain experience capital towards a regional perspective on the priority actions needed to promote climate finance for agriculture towards building a resilient agriculture,” said Ena Harvey, Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) Barbados Representative.

Kristian Flemming, Country Representative, St. Kitts/Nevis of the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI) – Climate Change Specialist, states that, “interdisciplinary and multi-stakeholder engagements on the barriers and facilitators for achieving agriculture resilience is mandatory. The role of climate finance is central to this discourse.”

The workshop is organised by CTA in collaboration with IICA and CARDI and supported by the European Development Fund (EDF). It brings together a diverse group of experts from the Caribbean and Latin America to identify priority actions for promoting climate finance for agriculture, and opportunities to raise the profile of agriculture in the implementation of NDC. The InterAmerican Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), co-host of the Workshop with CTA and CARDI, will be bring specialists from its Programme on Climate Change, Natural Resources and Production Risks.