Urgent response needed to bolster agricultural livelihoods in the North of Central America

During this week’s virtual briefing on the Humanitarian Response Plans for El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, FAO called for USD 38 million to provide vital support for over half a million people 

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) convened a virtual briefing this week on the recently launched Humanitarian Response Plans (HRPs) for the North of Central America, which include El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. 

Connecting to the virtual briefing from Rome was Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Deputy Director-General, Laurent Thomas. 

Thomas spoke of the importance behind acting urgently and collaboratively in tackling the multifaceted ailments currently facing millions across the three countries, especially those communities living along the Central American Dry Corridor, where prolonged droughts and water scarcity are increasingly threatening the ability of households to feed themselves.

“We believe that emergency livelihoods assistance is crucial to the humanitarian response in the region and to connect to longer-term recovery and resilience building efforts,” he said, touching on the grave and increasingly compounding risks in the long term for rural and agricultural communities and their livelihoods.

“Many communities are still struggling to recover from the 2020 hurricane season, with Eta and Iota – the strongest ever recorded for the region,” Thomas added.

Ensuring emergency response and tackling the root causes of hunger

The briefing served to position key UN priorities and that of resource partners on the ground, as well as to call for urgent resources and pledging commitments to the HRPs, which run through 2022. The HRPs aim at responding to the urgent needs of a region that finds itself at a crossroads of recurrent climate shocks, the impacts of COVID-19-related economic downturns, and historically rooted poverty, high persistent levels of inequality, violence, irregular migration and displacement.

Providing the humanitarian, geographic and socioeconomic backdrops and speaking of the government responses were the three corresponding Permanent Representatives to the United Nations in New York: Her Excellency Egriselda Lopez of El Salvador, His Excellency Luis Antonio Lam Padilla of Guatemala, and Her Excellency Mary Elizabeth Flores of Honduras. 

The North of Central America has long been characterized by a menu of parallel and closely interwoven drivers of food insecurity: high levels of poverty, climate extremes and shocks, limited access to basic services, economic instability, and low productivity of family farming. All of these, in turn, underpin irregular migration patterns and displacement.

El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras currently host almost 8 million people living in high acute food insecurity, with millions also chronically undernourished. Against this backdrop, Guatemala and Honduras have been identified as hunger hotspots, according to the latest FAO-WFP early warnings outlook on acute food insecurity.

FAO is appealing for vital support in mobilizing USD 38 million to support more than half a million people. The Organization and its partners aim to deliver timely assistance and long-term livelihood rehabilitation support through the restoration of agricultural capacities and infrastructure and the bolstering of resilient, agriculture-based livelihoods, especially those already affected, or at risk of being affected, by droughts and hurricanes. 

Thomas explained that these life and livelihood-saving resources can go to the distribution of time-critical agricultural inputs, livestock restocking and cash-based transfers. Supporting seed banks and rehabilitating critical infrastructure, such as greenhouses, water harvesting and storage systems and irrigations systems and fishponds, is also envisioned.

Finally, this FAO funding component foresees capacity building initiatives to ensure that emergency assistance is coupled with longer-term sustainable development support modalities, including through good agricultural practices for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation.

“We believe rural families are particularly exposed to the multiple risks facing the region, and they require urgent and sustained assistance to increase and safeguard their production, their livelihoods, and have the opportunity to remain on their lands, when feasible,” Thomas asserted.

Other statements from UN and resource partners and governments also underscored the need for a post-pandemic recovery in the region that understands how a humanitarian and sustainable development response plan can and should work in tandem, such that multifaceted responses can be provided and operationalized in a context of multidimensional hardships, as the ones seen in the three countries.

Warning against the price of inaction to this urgent response, the FAO Deputy Director-General called for significant and sustained investment in these efforts, through which FAO and its partners can upscale and replicate known solutions, with the most vulnerable in mind.

“We must continue to work together, using a timely and coordinated approach, to tackle the immediate humanitarian needs of vulnerable rural communities, while at the same time, increase their resilience to future shocks, addressing the root causes of food insecurity,” he said. 

The briefing was chaired by Ramesh Rajasingham, Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator, a.i.

Related links

• Watch the recording of the briefing or read this web story in Spanish.
• Access the HRPs for El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras here.
• Stay up to date on FAO’s work in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
• Read the brochure ‘Land of Opportunities: Dry Corridor in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras’