Agricultural stakeholders began conversations on specifying climate services needs and mechanisms for operationalizing their supply.
CASTRIES, Saint Lucia, January 31, 2017 (IICA). The Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) commenced the New Year with an interactive national dialogue in support of specifying climate services (information and knowledge products) for the agricultural sector.
The primary outputs of the activity were indicative advisories on the specific information and knowledge products that are being demanded by the various agricultural stakeholders, like farmers, extension officers and agricultural planners, among others, and suggestions on communication channels and actors who could support the effective development and dissemination of climate services in Saint Lucia.
The dialogue aimed to provide guidance on climate services and products being generated by the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH) to improve the utility of products to intended users at the national level.
“This dialogue is important to the continued efforts of IICA in Saint Lucia in supporting resilience of farmers and agricultural systems to the potentially harmful effects of a changing climate”, said Brent Theophile, IICA national specialist in Saint Lucia.
With this introduction to the concept and the insights gained, he added, both farmers and support agents have a platform for closer collaboration in generating value-adding climate services.
A total of twenty representatives from agricultural planning, the Meteorological Office, Agricultural Extension Services, development organizations and programmes and farmer groups were in attendance.
The activity was convened as a follow-up action to participation by the IICA Delegation in Saint Lucia in the Caribbean Climate Outlook Forum (CariCOF) meeting held on December.
More information: brent.theopile@iica.int
