A $60m Japanese grant aid project to address the impact of climate change was launched yesterday.
A release from the Ministry of Agriculture said that the Building Resilience and Sustainable Livelihood: Mainstreaming Disaster Risk Management/Disaster Risk Reduction (DRM/DRR) project in the agriculture sector will be supervised by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) was officially launched in the UNDP Conference Room.
Agriculture Minister Noel Holder emphasised the importance of implementing enhanced Disaster Risk Management mechanisms to offset the impact climate change has on the agriculture in Guyana.
“With the kind of economic losses and developmental setbacks that Guyana has experienced because of El Nino or drought-like periods and La Nina-related floods, particularly since 2000, it makes good economic sense to invest in prevention and mitigation of disasters,” he said in his feature address.
Japanese Ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago, Mitsuhiko Okada spoke of the importance Disaster Risk Management plays and pledged the continued support of the People and Government of Japan to Guyana.
In February of this year, the Japanese Government approved the US$300,000 to support DRM in Guyana.
FAO’s Deputy Sub-Regional Coordinator for the Caribbean, Dr Lystra Fletcher-Paul pointed to some of the impacts natural disasters pose on the Caribbean annually.
