Presenting COVID-19 response in ACP countries to the Council of the EU

FAO, together with its sister-agencies the World Food Programme (WFP) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) discussed a transition towards sustainable agri-food systems and support to African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries in their response to the COVID-19 pandemic with the ACP Working Party of the Council of the European Union upon invitation of the German Council presidency.

FAO was represented by the Director of the Forestry Division, Mette Wilkie. She highlighted FAO’s COVID-19 Response and Recovery programme and presented the EU Member States Representatives with a brief overview of projects implemented by FAO with the support of the Organisation for African, Caribbean and Pacific States including the Action Against Desertification Programme, the FISH4ACP Programme and the Sustainable Wildlife Management Programme (SWM). The programmes are financed by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for International Cooperation and Development through the European Development Fund.

Going further in-depth in the Sustainable Wildlife Management Programme, the Director gave particular emphasis to the programme’s activities on building back better in a post-COVID-19 world. She mentioned the programme’s recently-released white paper and policy brief on reducing future wildlife-borne spillovers of disease to humans as key publications for policy-makers to create an enabling policy environment for preventing, detecting and responding to zoonotic diseases. She emphasized the importance of a One Health approach in dealing with future zoonotic diseases and thanked the European Commission for its additional pledge of EUR 2 million to strengthen One Health in the SWM Programme.