Minister Joubert takes part in virtual Sids food solution forum |01 September 2021
Minister Joubert addressing the forum
Digitalisation and innovation is the theme chosen for a virtual food solution forum hosted by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations underway since yesterday.
Seychelles Minister for Agriculture, Climate Change and Environment, Flavien Joubert, along with other ministers from small island developing states (Sids), are taking part in the two-day forum.
The forum is a knowledge exchange platform to incubate, promote and scale-up local solutions to accelerate the achievement of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) related to food and agriculture.
Under the leadership of the director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), the FAO regional office for Asia and the Pacific is designing a Sids solutions programme. The programme, which will be launched in the Pacific later this year, will cover all Sids while gradually expanding to landlocked developing countries and all least developed countries.
The rationale for choosing digitalisation and innovation as the theme for the 2021 forum is driven by two key imperatives. First, agriculture, food, nutrition, the environment and health systems need to benefit from new and innovative solutions, and digitalisation and innovation offer a bright light among the alternatives.
The Sids solutions programme is driven by the belief that each Sids has many solutions and innovations that are either home-grown or copied externally which have the potential for scalability. Unfortunately, the coronavirus pandemic is causing an unprecedented development crisis in Sids by affecting livelihoods and in-person information exchange.
On the other hand, increasing access to the internet presents opportunities for innovation and knowledge sharing. The FAO is therefore proposing to draw on these opportunities to support Sids by establishing a knowledge exchange platform that can allow local solutions to benefit from investments to expand with catalytic impacts.
Addressing the forum, Minister Joubert highlighted that Sids are mostly affected by the impact of climate change. He further stated the urgent need for Africa’s Sids to collaborate and help tackle the challenges and vulnerabilities and ensure access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food for all people and eradicate all forms of malnutrition.
“On the Indian Ocean side, Comoros, Mauritius and Seychelles, we are working on shifting to sustainable and nutrition-sensitive food systems, including agriculture. Food systems need to support local family-based production while supplying sufficient quantities of food which must be of high quality, affordable, diverse and nutritious. With the support of the FAO, Seychelles has benefitted with the project to adopt efficient and climate-smart agriculture practices in African Sids. Seychelles is part of the effort to strengthen intraregional collaborative approaches to promote efficient and climate-smart practices, strategies and policies for food production, sustainable value chain and rural development of the interregional initiative on Sids and benefits through intraregional exchange and knowledge sharing activities,” said Minister Joubert.
“The FAO’s technical cooperation projects for Indian Ocean Sids are oriented to support smallholder farmers and food systems harmonisation. For Seychelles, for instance, a project to upgrade agriculture and to deal with imports of pork and broiler poultry will be implemented to address the current uncompetitive nature of the livestock sub-sectors and to propose ways to enhance the national agricultural sector as addressing the former would invariably offer some important solutions for the progress of the crops sub-sector as the sub-sectors are inextricably linked,” Minister Joubert further pointed out.
In order to launch the Sids solutions programme, the FAO is working with governments, donors, development partners and communities to organise a two-day forum in 2021.
The first day was marked by two successive two-hour high-level sessions attended by heads of state/heads of government, ministers for agriculture, the FAO director-general and heads of other United Nations agencies, donors, private sector and civil society representatives. The purpose is for these leaders to stimulate critical debates about the value proposition of the new programme in the context of the Covid-19 with emphasis on accelerating the achievement of the SDGs in Sids. The expected output is collective support to the new initiative.
The second day will be technical and will enable community groups and individuals to engage institutional policy-makers, development practitioners and the private sector in showcasing development solutions that are ready for scaling up. At least 10 viable solutions rooted in innovation and digitalisation will be identified, profiled and showcased. The expected output will be the creation of a concrete mechanism for replicating and scaling-up selected solutions that will accelerate the achievement of SDGs in Sids.
Press release from the Ministry of Agriculture, Climate Change and Environment