Host Region

Pacific Islands

Budget

US$11.47 million

Beneficiaries

14 Small Island Developing States

Background

• The Pacific Island Forum countries are diverse in people, cultures, and levels of social and economic development,. However, they do share common constraints that impede their efforts to achieve a balanced economic growth and sustainable food security at both national and household levels.
• Food insecurity in the Pacific region remains a challenge and priorities for addressing this challenge include adequate policy aimed at ensuring access to food for the poor, more effective food use and nutrition information and the promotion of policy for poor agricultural producers, fostering their income opportunities by increasing agricultural productivity and by mitigating further impacts of the changing international economic environment.

Goals

Contributing to the stabilization of food security, at both national and household levels in the developing member countries of the Pacific Islands Forum.

Activities

• Enhance production and income generation while promoting nutrition at the national level through community level interventions and technical support.
• Build national and regional capacity on trade facilitation and agriculture policies through the following activities: food quality and safety standards; promoting intra-regional trade; commodity development programmes; Marrakesh Agreement follow-up; harmonization of agricultural and trade policies and analysis of socio-economic constraints.
• A second, expanded phase of the Programme that was presented to the FAO and the South West Pacific Ministers of Agriculture at a meeting in May 2007 was approved.

SSC

• Assistance to the Pacific Island countries is provided by China and the Philippines through the SSC Programme.
• SSC is proving to be an innovative, efficient, cost effective tool to boost the income generating activities of the RPFS

Results

• A regional training course in food safety and regulation in international trade was attended by 24 participants from 13 of the 14 countries who are recipients of the regional project. The course delivered concepts and methodologies of high demand among trade and food quality concerned institutions in the Pacific, and recommended that a regional approach should be used in addressing matters related to the implementation of food quality/safety frameworks for Pacific Island Countries.
• Three commodity chain studies were implemented in close collaboration between FAO, the Italian Institute of Agricultural Economics and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community in Fiji, Kiribati and Vanuatu, respectively for import substitution, food security and export potential.
• A final regional workshop was organized in Fiji in February 2007 to present and assess the findings with the Pacific Island member countries representatives.
• Both the recommendations and the methodology/investigation tools used were endorsed by a wide audience, including 13 national governments, 3 regional organizations, 7 NGOs and 4 food business managers. Thus, the specific objective of the activity (to work out a strategy for local institutions/operators to support the chain of the products investigated) as well as the overall goal of providing Pacific member countries/regional organizations with a tested methodology to implement chain studies targeting food security/trade, were achieved. Hence, concrete outputs were delivered to the Pacific member countries.