FAO helps countries measure climate’s impacts on agriculture

Thursday, 30 May 2019 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Agriculture is highly vulnerable to weather extremes and disasters. In developing countries, the agriculture sector absorbs 26% of the total economic damage and loss caused by climate-induced disasters, according to one recent FAO study. Smallholder farmers, which provide for more than 70% of global food needs, are among the most vulnerable, followed by small and medium-sized agricultural enterprises.

However, it isn’t always easy to understand the extent to which disasters impact agriculture and rural livelihoods. FAO aims to fix that with a new standardised methodology for assessing damage and loss.

The methodology aims to identify holes in information regarding the impact of disasters on agriculture. It’s holistic enough to be applied to disaster events in various country and regional contexts, and it’s precise enough to consider all agricultural subsectors (crops, livestock, aquaculture, fisheries and forestry).

FAO developed the methodology based on countries’ requests, as part of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and the Sustainable Development Goal monitoring framework. The methodology will be used to collect data and monitor progress towards global targets on resilience, and it constitutes a useful tool for assembling and interpreting existing information to inform risk-related policies, decisions and practices.

To ensure the effective, reliable and standardised global monitoring of disaster damage and loss in agriculture, FAO is collaborating with governments throughout the world – from Latin America and the Caribbean to East Africa and Southeast Asia – in the adoption, operationalisation and implementation of this methodology.

FAO’s work on damage and loss assessment in agriculture is nested in a broader corporate priority of increasing the resilience of agriculture-based livelihoods against threats and crises. The FAO approach towards these issues taps into a wide range of technical expertise on various types of shocks, and it considers the specificities of each subsector. It focuses on anticipating, preventing, reducing, adapting to and absorbing risk within the agricultural system.

The methodology has been incorporated into the monitoring framework for the Sustainable Development Goals.