APRC 37 Special Ministerial Meeting for SIDS, LDCs and LLDCs Welcome Remarks

Excellences,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am pleased to welcome you to this Special Ministerial Meeting for SIDS, LDCs, and LLDCs on the margins of the FAO Regional Ministerial Conference for Asia and the Pacific

Bringing increased visibility to the sustainable development of SIDS, LDCs and LLDCs is always central to my agenda.

The rich natural resources of SIDS, LDCs and LLDCs ranging from the abundance of oceans, rivers, lands, mountains, forests, and biodiversity provide many opportunities.

But these countries also have many specific challenges due to remoteness, frequent natural hazards and disasters, and vulnerability to the impacts of the climate crisis, among other, which have not always allowed them to develop their agrifood systems to their full potential to provide the prosperity needed.

The increasing trends of globalization also provide many advantages and disadvantages. For example, our small-scale farmers and fishery households enjoy increasing access to global markets yet are also extremely vulnerable to the impacts of global economic turbulence as we have recently seen with the cascading impacts of COVID-19 and the increase in prices of food, agricultural inputs, and energy.

For this reason, at the beginning of my first term as FAO Director-General, I established the FAO Office of SIDS, LDCs and LLDCs, to support unlocking opportunities and partnerships to address the needs of this important block of FAO Members.

Through the FAO Hand-in-Hand Initiative, launched in September 2019, FAO introduced an innovative approach to working smarter, together, at the scale required, for measurable impact to address the multifaceted challenges countries face.

These include, among others, increasing hunger and malnutrition, rising inequality, vulnerability to the climate crisis, soil degradation and depletion of freshwater resources.

The Hand-in-Hand Initiative is focused on the most vulnerable countries and communities, especially SIDS, LDCs and LLDCs.

In June last year, I convened a High-Level Ministerial Event “Transforming Agrifood Systems to Increase Resilience and Achieve the 2030 Agenda: Harnessing the potential of SIDS, LDCs and LLDCs”.

The event led to a Call for Action by Ministers and high-level representatives and the proposed establishment of a Ministerial network for SIDS, LDCs and LLDCs, with technical support from FAO, as a mechanism to share experiences and collectively build resilience to the climate crisis, food insecurity, and to secure investments to scale-up transformation of agrifood systems.

Today’s meeting is an important opportunity to exchange views on how to tailor this network to meet your needs.

In addition, in 2021, I set up the SIDS Solutions Platform, with the first Forum co-hosted virtually by FAO and Fiji in 2021, and a second Forum specifically dedicated to the Pacific SIDS, co-hosted by FAO and Samoa in 2022.

The SIDS Solutions Platform facilitates knowledge sharing within SIDS and between SIDS, LDCs, LLDCs and other countries to catalyze and inject innovations, investments, and resilience in agrifood systems.

This solutions-oriented approach is also embedded in the Global Roadmap: Achieving SDG 2 without breaching the 1.5C threshold, launched at COP28, aimed at ensuring good nutritious food for all through a package of solutions across 10 domains and with 120 actions.

A project has also been implemented, with the support of the Government of the Republic of Korea, to facilitate exchanges between government representatives and local agrifood systems actors from SIDS in Asia and the Pacific and Korean farmers.

The project aims to facilitate the transfer of Korean innovative and digital farming methods to catalyze agricultural production in atoll nations and remote outer islands in the Pacific, with a foreseen USD 3 million grant in 6 Pacific countries.

FAO has also secured USD 5 million from the China-FAO South-South Cooperation Trust Fund to support SIDS in all regions to accelerate the transformation of their agrifood systems to build sustainable and resilient livelihoods.

Through innovation, technology deployment, capacity development and partnerships, the project will foster the ability of farmers to be active agents of change for the agriculture sector and their communities.

These activities are only a few examples of our collective successes in advancing the development agenda of SIDS, LDCs and LLDCs.

These efforts have been recognized by our Members and I wish to express my appreciation to all our partners who are working hand-in-hand with FAO to improve the livelihoods of all people in SIDS, LDCs, and LLDCs through the Four Betters: better production, better nutrition, a better environment, and a better life – leaving no one behind.

Thank you.