Worried about the devastating effects of floods on agriculture, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is supporting the Federal Government with tools to anticipate floods to mitigate it.
The Country Representative of FAO to Nigeria and ECOWAS, Mr Koffy Kouacou Dominique while speaking with journalists at the Anticipatory Action for Flood Risk in the Sahel Workshop, said about 52 million persons in the region are food insecure.
It is a regional workshop for learning and identification of best practices, challenges and way forward to scale up anticipatory action for floods in the Sahel and is supported by the German Government and other partners.
He said one of the major factors driving food insecurity in the Sahel Region is climate change which results in flooding.
“So, how we can better anticipate how to allow our farmers to better cultivate and boost the production in the country, that is one of the key purposes of the regional workshop.
“It is better for all of us to discuss how we can better anticipate how to help the farmers boost their production and grow their yield.
“We are facing a very serious security situation in our region. For example, in 2020, we had around 7 million people in our region affected by the flood. FAO did studies in 6 countries, we have 2.4 million hectares of land destroyed by flood,” he said.
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Dominique further stated that in 2020, only in Nigeria, flood destroyed farmland and crops that were capable of feeding 5 million people.
“So, if we have all this information in advance, we can avoid these destructions and we can advise the government.
“So, the key outcome of this meeting is how we can help the government have all the tools for anticipatory action.
“The relevant government bodies are already onboard, now we will set up a task force to support the government in the implementation process which is like a monitoring and evaluation to ensure that all the outcome of this workshop is implemented”, he added.
Luca Parodi, Regional Specialist for FAO working on Anticipatory Action and Emergency Response said the workshop brought together many actors, regional partners, the government, Civil Societies, and other United Nations Agencies to look together at how they can better manage flood risk in a more proactive way and trying to learn from the different ideas that the different actors will put on the table.
He said the workshop also provides the opportunity to share information on how the stakeholders can improve together collectively on early warning, surveillance risk and the information to the communities.
“Without good information and good early warning, you cannot actually anticipate anything.
“We need to invest in better ways to manage risk because we know unfortunately the Sahel according to climate suggestions is going to really change in terms of the frequency and also the strength of the hazards that we are going to face.
“Our role at FAO is to support the government and the regional organization to learn some new ideas or strengthen what they are already doing to face this riskier future. And you need the early warning, but also you need the funding to implement,” Parodi noted.