Climate Change and Food Security in the Pacific islands

Andrew McGregor Koko Siga Fiji

Impact of future climate extremes on Pacific island agriculture

• Extreme climatic events will threaten the food security and economic wellbeing of rural

households • Major negative impacts on already fragile

economies • Risk management: important that Pacific

islands farmers be given the best opportunity to be able to adapt to these extremes.

Range of adaption strategies and coping mechanisms requiring government and

donor support1. Enhancing the resilience of traditional cropping systems2. Promoting appropriate traditional planting material

preservation3. Developing improved germplasm for traditional

crops that are better suited to climatic extremes and associated pest and disease problems.

4. Ensuring that secure and effective planting material production systems (community, national and regional) are in place

The vulnerability of traditional Pacific island crops

• Despite the strength of traditional Pacific island crops and cropping systems in dealing with risk and disasters, there is an underlying

vulnerability due to the narrow genetic base of these crops

• Most of the taro grown across the Pacific originated in Melanesia - this makes these root crops particularly

susceptible to the impact of diseases (e.g. taro leaf blight)

Two case studies• Utilising regional and national

germplasm collections as a climate change adaptation strategy: the

case study of taro leaf blight in Samoa

• Broadening the genetic base of root crops in Vanuatu: a proactive

climate change adaptation strategy

By enabling farmers to adapt to climate extremes

in the medium term, future generations of farmers will be better

placed to adapt to climate change

Premise of the study

Different approaches to conservation/crop improvement + disaster management

• Samoa study demonstrates how crop conservation utilising regional genebank coupled with an in-country breeding and distribution program provides a basis for an effective response to a biological disaster

• Vanuatu study demonstrates a proactive approach where crop conservation, (ex situ and in situ) is used to enhance the diversity of the gene pool - providing the farmers with ‘genetic insurance’ to manage climatic variability and future biological disasters

Case studies clearly show the substantial benefits of crop germplasm conservation

• Samoa - large quantifiable economic benefits that far

outweigh costs + other significant benefits

• Vanuatu - benefits yet to be realised thus more difficult to

quantify

Key findings• Need for farmers to have access to genetic

diversity and systems by which diversity can be used + evaluated = provides farmers with a range of options to deal with the variables of climate change

• Providing diversity is not a one-off solution – the nature of climate change demands ongoing existence regional germplasm centre operating as a hub. This requires substantial long term funding

Identified projects requiring substantial support

• Replicating of the Samoa taro breeding program in Fiji - the arrival of TLB is seen

as inevitable• Scaling up of the Vanuatu pilot ‘in-situ’

conservation project• Replicating the Vanuatu project in other

Melanesian countries