High-Level Event on responding to the impacts of El Niño and mitigating recurring climate risks

High-Level Event on responding to the impacts of El Niño and mitigating recurring climate risks 

Ms Maria Helena Semedo, Deputy Director-General, FAO, 23 September, New York 

 

We now know that the agriculture, food security and nutritional status of more than 60 million people have been affected by El Niño-related droughts, floods and extreme weather.

About 5 billion US dollars are needed to meet the humanitarian demands of El Niño-affected countries - nearly 80 percent just for agricultural and food security needs.

We can say that El Nino is, above all, a food and agricultural crisis.

FAO has mobilized 69 million US dollars to support the agriculture sectors – allowing us to reach 1.3 million households in Africa.

In Ethiopia, FAO coordinated an emergency seed response to safeguard livelihoods of over 1.5 million small-scale farmers.

In Southern Africa, FAO supports the new SADC El Niño Response Team to coordinate efforts at the regional level.

In Madagascar, after three years of drought , over 1.2 million people are food insecure - 80% of them farmers. A joint FAO-WFP response is under way.

 

Ladies and gentlemen,

With more frequent and severe climate related disasters, early warning plays a critical role.

FAO has supported over 15 risk prone countries to build resilience, and strengthen agricultural disaster risk reduction plans and National Adaptation Plans to boost medium-to-long term sustainable agriculture, food security and nutrition.

But we cannot - and do not - act alone.

I’m pleased to report that FAO - in partnership with OCHA – is developing Inter-Agency Standard Operating Procedures for dealing with El Niño and La Niña events. We believe that this will fill an important gap in current humanitarian architecture.

We must place all our efforts behind Anticipating, Absorbing and Adapting to climate change.

Failure to do so risks reversing economic and social gains achieved in so many countries, and jeopardizes the livelihoods, food security and nutrition, leaving millions of people behind.

Thank you for your attention.