Project Established to Enable Farmers to Deal with Impacts of Climate Change

The Government has established a collaborative project from a US$17-million Adaptation Fund, to enable farmers and other groups working in tourism to lessen the impacts of climate change.

Through the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA) and the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation, the five-year programme, funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), will provide for capacity-building of key sectors to adapt to a changing climate.

Under Component 1, climate change adaptation will be mainstreamed at the national, sectoral and community levels; and Component 2 will see the creation of financial mechanisms to support climate resilience in micro, small and medium- size enterprises (MSMEs).

Component 3 will focus on knowledge management, and supports the documentation of methodologies and techniques piloted under the project as well as the dissemination of lessons learned and good practices.

Speaking at the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between RADA and the Ministry on October 20 at the Ministry’s New Kingston offices, Permanent Secretary, Mrs. Audrey Sewell, said RADA’s involvement will be in the form of providing expertise and on-the-ground supervision of relevant project activities.

“These include the planting of live vegetation barriers, construction of check dams, establishment of communal rainwater harvesting systems, construction of greenhouses, and implementation of an agro-forestry programme and community reforestation project,” the Permanent Secretary outlined.

For her part, Acting Principal Director of Technical Services at RADA, Marina Young, said the MOU represents a “significant” moment and the Authority is grateful to the funding agency and the Ministry for piloting the project into the “very important area of agriculture”.

She said the agency’s technical skills will go into the various aspects of the project to ensure that “all the project objectives are met, and our major beneficiaries, the farming communities, are able to mitigate the impacts of climate change”.