The National Consultation Workshop on the 36th Session of the FAO Regional Conference for Asia and the Pacific (APRC) held in Vientiane on Feb 8.
The workshop is a critical forum in order to prepare and provide national perspective from the Lao PDR. It is an opportunity for all relevant stakeholders in the country.
The participant will review the priorities of the regional conference and review linkages to the national priorities and goals.
The National Consultation Workshop on the 36th Session of the FAO Regional Conference for Asia and the Pacific (APRC) which is being organized from 8th to 11th March 2022 in Dhaka Bangladesh.
“Climate change is one of the most important challenges to enhancing food security and nutrition in the region and globally. Resilience to climate change is a crucial feature of sustainable agrifood systems,” said Mr Thongphat Vongmany, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Forestry.
He explained strengthening the climate resilience of agrifood systems requires action to anticipate, absorb and accommodate shocks or to manage the impacts or recover from shocks resulting from climate variability and change over time. Our country has suffered significantly due to climate change during the last few years. There have been floods, droughts and as a result, the pest and diseases have increased.
“The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has been intensively working on the COVID-19 Response and Recovery Programme to reach a larger share of rural populations and to relaunch economic activities,” said Mr Nasar Hayat, FAO Country Representative.
“The Programme is now focusing on building back better and stronger towards transforming agrifood systems across all our Four Betters, with an emphasis on science and innovation, climate change, legal frameworks and scaling up. This paper examines the situation in Asia and the Pacific during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021,” said Mr Nasar Hayat.
The COVID pandemic has now entered third year. And as in much of the world, Asia the Pacific has had their share of rising infections, deaths, and several peaks and waves the most recent ones are Delta and now Omicron.
The macroeconomic impacts of the COVID-pandemic were negative across the board, with the region as a whole contracting by more than 4% in 2020 erasing the gains of 4% the year before.
2021 started off as a better year but the regional economy was stalled under the severe hit of Delta and only began recovering at the end of 2021.
Source: Lao News Agency