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Food, Water and Climate Change
April 2003

By Wesley Gibbings, CERN correspondent

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There is perhaps no greater indication of a nation's sovereignty that its ability to feed itself. However, today, several factors are leading to questions about the sustainability of food production in the Caribbean. One of the factors is climate change which has affected water resources in the region.

The situation has worsened over the years, says David Bowin, regional director of the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO).

"CARICOM as a whole has been facing an increasing trade deficit for food during the last two decades, says Bowin. "When import and export are taken as a whole we were almost balanced at the beginning of the 1980s. There is now a considerable food trade deficit and this trade deficit is especially large for basic food."

According to Vincent Sweeney, executive director of the Caribbean Environmental Health Institute (CEHI), the availability of fresh water resources poses a further challenge.

"In theory we have enough water for now, but we must carefully manage it and augment existing and non-traditional sources to include rainwater," says Sweeney.

Some countries have already started witnessing problems associated with water shortage. In 1994, Jamaica experienced a severe drought, the worst in 50 years. It impacted severely on banana and coconut production and cost the country millions in lost export sales. In Haiti, the situation is worse.

What is the solution? The issue of water in the context of climate change is being actively engaged, says Robert Best of the Caribbean Agri-Business Association.

"Water is central to all living things and to agricultural production systems, both crops and animals, and increasingly as producers of these products, we are finding we need to treat the issue of water much more seriously," says Best.

According to Bowin, it is vitally important that the region deals with the current shortfalls in food supply.

"The continuing growth of food import has a direct impact on the balances of agriculture and food trade with consequences for food supply and food security," says Bowin. The question of sufficient water for food depends on many factors such as the demand, the types of food grown and the rate of importation, he argues.

"Theoretically," he says, "the Caribbean has enough food to feed peoples of the different islands, but there is need for caution. We have to manage resources better, as the population grows and our islands develop new industries and expand existing ones, such as tourism."

According to Best, the food sector can respond in several ways to the challenges posed by inadequate water.

"First it has to identify water sources and manage them better, develop technology and management systems, increase the efficiency of the use of water by using irrigation systems that don't leak, such as drip irrigation as opposed to flood irrigation."

The region could develop more efficient systems of washing livestock facilities and processing plants and also manage diseases in a way that it needs less water to achieve similar levels of sanitation, says Best.

This doesn't however negate the need to constantly replenish the supply of freshwater.

"There is that dimension of the process, where through better management, we can reduce the requirement for water," says Best. "But since populations are growing, we will always have the challenge of finding more water, as well as managing it better."

Everything comes down to how well the region copes with the inevitable phenomenon of climate variability and change, says Jan Vermeiren of the sustainable development unit of the Organisation of America States (OAS). "Small Island have to start making more efficient use of their resources," he says. "They have to manage the water much more carefully. We have to better manage nature's capacity to produce clean and plentiful water, as one of the adaptation strategies for the small islands."

This article is based on a transcription of Island Beat Radio.

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