Indian Ocean Tsunami, need for agricultural resilience

Ten years after the Indian Ocean Tsunami, the need for increasing resilience of agricultural livelihoods against disasters is a major lesson learned – FAO

Jakarta, Indonesia, 24 November 2014 – With the ten year anniversary of the devastating Indian Ocean Tsunami just weeks away, representatives from ASEAN member countries are assessing the lessons they’ve learned and action taken since then to increase the resilience of agricultural livelihoods to natural disasters.

Several countries of the ASEAN region were among the hardest hit by the 26 December 2004 tsunami, particularly Indonesia’s Aceh province. In total, across the region, hundreds of thousands lost their lives or were displaced, entire fishing communities wiped out and coastal plantations destroyed.

In this context, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has jointly with the Government of Indonesia and the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance convened a technical workshop to consider the resilience of agriculture to major disasters in conjunction. The workshop shared lessons learned from the Indian Ocean Tsunami – and other major disasters such as Typhoon Haiyan that struck the Philippines just over a year ago – and assessed what remains to be done in the agriculture forestry and fisheries sectors to prevent such wide scale damage and losses from reoccurring.

During opening remarks, FAO Deputy Regional Representative, Vili Fuavao, on behalf of FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative, Hiroyuki Konuma highlighted that :“Reducing risks and increasing resilience to natural disasters and extreme climate events is a priority for FAO and is now mainstreamed in all our relevant work. FAO assists countries in building resilience and responding to natural disasters and extreme climate events in the agriculture, land, fisheries, livestock and forests sectors in order to ensure food security and good nutrition for all.”

He further stressed “It has been proven that by reducing disaster risks and increasing resilience, that populations will be less vulnerable to disasters and crises, there could be less death and destruction, that rehabilitation cost could be lessened and that recovery to development would be quicker.” On the other hand he stressed however, “that resilience can only be achieved through commitment, capacity building, and engaging vulnerable populations in the systematic implementation of disaster risk reduction strategies across all sectors.”

The workshop’s participants are considering a number of lessons learned across the region, including better governance practices such as development/implementation of technical standards for risk reduction and management in agriculture; vulnerability assessments and early warning systems; prevention and mitigation measures to reduce risks and impacts (including due to climate change and variability) and preparedness for, and response to, disasters affecting the agriculture sectors.

ENDS

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