FAO Geneva Director addresses the Humanitarian Liaison Working Group

On 27 January, the FAO in Geneva Director, Mr Dominique Burgeon joined the UK-hosted meeting of the Humanitarian Liaison Working Group, which focused on Collective Approaches to Climate Change in a Humanitarian Setting. In his intervention, he stressed the importance of climate for agricultural production and highlighted the impacts of climate change on the agriculture sector. “As at September 2021, 161 million people were acutely food insecure in the world, two-thirds of whom living in rural areas and relying on agriculture for their survival,” said Burgeon who continued, “we must step up our support to these communities, focusing on prevention and preparedness, for example scaling up disaster risk reduction and increasing resources for anticipatory action linked to early warning.” Mr Burgeon then urged that these actions must be part of wider efforts to strengthen the resilience of agri-food systems. He commented that humanitarian, development, peace and climate actors are already stepping up collaboration on the ground to not only respond to the impacts of climate change but to proactively reduce disaster risks and build resilience, with agriculture as an ideal entry point.