CONTEXT
The Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs) face numerous developmental challenges. Climate change and food security have been identified as priority development agendas in the Pacific[1]. In addition, the Pacific Leaders at its 49th Pacific Leaders Forum (Nauru, 2018) recognised that non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in the Pacific region are reaching pandemic levels to become the leading cause of deaths (70%), with unhealthy diets contributing to the highest risk factor for cardiovascular disease and diabetes induced deaths in the Pacific[2].
COVID-19 IMPACTS ON FOOD AND NUTRITION SECURITY
The COVID-19 pandemic is placing additional challenges to Pacific economies with movement restrictions within and across borders, impacting trade and food systems in PICTs. Evidence suggests that certain demographics with underlying high-risk factors such as age, lifestyle and poor health are more vulnerable to COVID-19. This is a profound concern for PICTs, which are food insecure and to a large extent depend on food imports that are often of poor quality. The pandemic is also having a long-term impact on local food production and value chains, with high dependency on imported agro-inputs such as seeds, fertilisers, chemicals and livestock feeds/supplements. This will exacerbate availability and access to quality foods for vast majority of the Pacific populations.
RESPONSE
In order to alleviate the impact of COVID-19 on food and nutrition security situation in PICTs, the Pacific Community (SPC), being the regional technical agency, is working with its member countries in developing short to medium term support packages as a direct response to the impacts of COVID-19 dovetailed to specific needs of the members. The main objective is to ensure food and nutrition security for most vulnerable communities and to establish the basis for medium to long term economic recovery needs of countries.
Short-Term Response Plan
To achieve this objective, SPC in the short-term is focusing on supporting COVID-19 emergency response plans of PICTs to strengthen preparedness/response through improved coordination and partnerships with a broad range of regional and national stakeholders including extension and advisory services to provide the necessary package of support services as follows:
Strengthening seed systems– SPC is focusing on enabling countries to have sufficient availability and access to diverse, climate resilient and nutritional crop varieties. This activity will be implemented in close collaboration with countries’ ministries of agriculture, research and extension/advisory services. The support will involve promotion of short-term horticultural seed grains and resilient clonal crop varieties following seeds evaluation, testing and distribution within formal and informal seed systems.
Backyard gardening– SPC is complementing national initiatives on promoting model backyard integrated gardens consisting of short-term vegetables, roots and tubers, fruits and small- livestock for food security, focusing in urban and other populated areas through the provision and distribution of resilient seeds, improved poultry breeds and integrated farming practices. Support also involves reviewing and inventorying existing information packages and guidelines/practices on backyard production systems, disseminate knowledge products to countries and follow-up in-country capacity building through virtual platforms.
Mixed cropping system
Small scale livestock support–
Activities and services revolve around strengthening national capacities on small livestock production systems (focusing on poultry) through provisioning of improved breeds and establishment of small poultry units, procurement of veterinary tools and equipment to support disease surveillance and diagnosis, and dissemination of awareness and training materials on small livestock husbandry practices.
Awareness and training support–Building on the core competencies within LRD, support also involves providing technical support targeted at developing/promoting awareness and technical information on relevant agricultural production technologies and dissemination to countries through various networks and platforms housed in SPC including PIRAS.
Medium -Term Response Plan
The medium support package is targeted at establishing the foundation for mid-long-term economic recovery needs of countries:
Promotion of high-value chains for domestic markets–Focus will be to stocktake high-value cash crops for domestic markets to identify gaps and working with relevant authorities in-country to promote high-value commodities in domestic markets.
Biosecurity–Support will be targeted at capacity building on surveillance and diagnostics through provision (procurement) of PPE’s, strengthening Early Warning Systems through technical support as well as training and upgrading of information systems.
IMPLEMENTATION
SPC, being the key Pacific regional technical service provider related to agriculture and forestry, is the lead implementer of the above described COVID-19 response activities with funding support from the European Union, Australia Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT).
Implementation of activities is being coordinated at various levels in partnership with several key development partners such as ACIAR, Land Care New Zealand and others. At the Pacific regional level, SPC is collaborating with a range of stakeholder/partners through the Pacific Food Security Cluster – linked to the Global Food Security Cluster to support programming as well as logistics and other coordination support mechanisms.
In-country activities are being coordinated through ministries of agriculture, specifically with research and extension services. Extension services play an important role at various levels. During the planning and programming phase, consultations were facilitated through Pacific Islands Rural Advisory Services (PIRAS) focal points in countries that provided the national COVID-19 response priorities to inform the formulation of SPC response packages. Extension services also play critical role in coordinating the implementation of activities in countries with various stakeholders.
