October 2010: The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat has posted the final draft of the Regional Food and Nutrition Security Policy, which includes a section on food stability focusing on improving the food and nutrition security resilience of the region to natural and socioeconomic shocks and climate change.

The draft seeks to provide a holistic policy framework for the period 2011-2025, translating the major orientations and elements of the overarching and underexploited regional development agreements and initiatives into concrete policy priorities that will guide the design, implementation and monitoring of specific future periodic strategic action programmes to address the major food and nutrition security challenges in the CARICOM region. Among its principles, the draft recognizes that forests constitute a substantive resource for food and nutrition security to be protected through adaptation to climate change. The draft also links CARICOM’s food security vision for the Caribbean food system development to the challenges of climate change mitigation and adaptation, and the need for policy coherence among agriculture, trade, fisheries, energy and environment.

On food stability, the draft suggests: pursuing climate-resilient development for the food and agriculture sector; focusing on coastal management and sustainable forest management, while improving livelihoods and ensuring their stability over time; encouraging member States to reduce tariffs on goods that could assist in the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by the agricultural and agro-processing industries; integrating climate management considerations into programmes to develop farm management and build industry and farming community capacities to increase resilience; and promoting the inclusion of adaptation and mitigation strategies in the curricula of all training institutions and extension training mechanisms for farmers and other producers. [The Draft Policy]