Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Mr Thongphat Vongmany made this statement when addressing a workshop which he co-chaired last week with FAO Country Representative to Laos, Mr Nasar Hayat.

The National Consultation Workshop was held in preparation for the 36th Session of the FAO Regional Conference for Asia and the Pacific, which will take place from March 8-11 in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
The workshop was a critical forum to enable Laos and its stakeholders to review the priorities of the regional conference as well as linkages to national priorities and goals.

Mr Thongphat said climate change was a major challenge to improving food security and nutrition in the region and globally. Resilience to climate change is a crucial feature of sustainable agrifood systems, he added.

Strengthening the climate resilience of agrifood systems requires action to anticipate, absorb and accommodate shocks and to manage the impacts and recover from the shocks that result from climate variability and change over time.

The deputy minister said Laos had suffered significantly due to climate change in the last few years, which had resulted in floods, prolonged dry spells, crop pests and animal disease outbreaks.

Human, animal, plant, and environmental health are intimately connected through the ecological realities governing life, he said.

 “Our health depends on the health of the environment, which provides us, at a minimum, with the food we eat, the air we breathe, and the water we drink. With rapid population growth, as well as globalisation and environmental degradation, health threats have become more complex.”

Solutions cannot be found by one sector alone. The problems affecting human health, terrestrial and aquatic animals, plants, and the environment can be effectively resolved only through improved coordination, communication and collaborative actions across disciplines and sectors, in ways that are sustainable, Mr Thongphat said.
This has come to be called the One Health approach and is another important area for consideration from the Lao perspective, as there is no solution that can be found by one country alone.

The workshop reviewed key findings with a focus on Lao and regional priorities and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change on the livelihoods of vulnerable people and agro-food systems across the country.
The outcomes of the national consultation will be discussed at the Asia-Pacific Regional Conference.

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Resource:

Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry News

Vientiane Times (Paywall)

Vientiane Mai