The resilience of the country’s agriculture sector, which has some 6000 active farmers, is important not only for the island nation itself, but for the entire Caribbean region, since for decades much of its production has been exported to neighboring islands, explained Roland Royer, Dominica’s Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Blue and Green Economy.
Baku, Azerbaijan, 21 November 2024 (IICA). As Dominica waits for the developed countries to fulfill their pledge to deliver financial aid to help developing countries improve their capacity to adapt to new climate scenarios under the terms of the Paris Agreement, it is working hard to make its agriculture more sustainable and resilient, with support from the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and other international organizations.
The resilience of the country’s agriculture sector, which has some 6000 active farmers, is important not only for the island nation itself, but for the entire Caribbean region, since for decades much of its production has been exported to neighboring islands, explained Roland Royer, Dominica’s Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Blue and Green Economy.
Dominica’s minister took part in activities at the Home of Sustainable Agriculture of the Americas pavilion that IICA operated at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan.
“Like other developing countries in the region, we emit almost no carbon or other greenhouse gases, but are extremely vulnerable to increasingly frequent and more extreme weather events,” Royer said.
The minister is one of the voices of the Americas present at the pavilion that IICA installed in Baku with its partners from the public and private sectors to tell the world about the reality of agriculture in the hemisphere, and to showcase the efforts that its farmers are making to produce more and more food in harmony with nature.
The minister reminded his audience that in September 2017 Dominica was hit by Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island and caused significant damage.
“We had to rebuild not only the agriculture sector, but the entire country, and we had to do it with our own resources, even though we are not responsible for climate change,” Royer added, explaining that the Caribbean countries need support from the international community, particularly from the industrialized countries.
The minister also explained that Domina has a 40-year relationship with IICA.
“IICA has been a good friend of Dominica over the past four decades in terms of transferring technologies, in terms of helping farmers and in terms of improving the lives of rural communities in general. IICA has also helped to get young people interested in agriculture and provided great support to women in the communities,” he added.
“I myself am a beneficiary of IICA’s work, having participated in a training program in Costa Rica in 2019, which I believe has given me the impetus to continue in the sector and try to improve. The organization is essential for farmers to acquire knowledge and be more competitive in the market. So we thank IICA for its support over the past forty years and we look forward to continuing to work together,” the minister concluded.
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