UN meeting urges long-term development action for food security, safeguarding livelihoods.

Figure: Small-scale family farmers and rural communities are highly vulnerable to extreme weather events.

FAO 30 June 2016, Rome - Urgent action by the international community and governments in the Dry Corridor of Central America is essential to help build resilience, food security, and restore livelihoods damaged by drought and other extreme-weather effects of El Niño, United Nations leaders said today.

The devastating El Niño event that began in 2015 was one of the worst on record and its impact continues to be felt in the Dry Corridor, compounding the damage from two consecutive years of drought. As a result, some 3.5 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance with 1.6 million moderately or severely food insecure in the hard-hit countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

To raise awareness and coordinate responses to both the protracted El Niño-related crises in the Dry Corridor and the possibility of a related La Niña event in the second half of 2016, UN agencies and other partners met today at the Rome headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The meeting included the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP), with the aim of mobilizing the international community to support the efforts of governments, UN agencies and other partners.

Minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Nutrition of Guatemala, Mario Méndez, Secretary of Agriculture and Livestock of Honduras, Jacobo Paz Bodden, and Vice-Minister of Agriculture and Livestock of El Salvador, Hugo Flores, joined the meeting which concluded with a communiqué that stressed common challenges within the Dry Corridor, including adaptation of the production systems of small-scale family farmers to climate change; and expanding efforts to reduce poverty, inequality and the socioeconomic and environmental vulnerability of the region.

In opening remarks, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva stressed that "the challenge facing the Dry Corridor is not only climate change: it is also extreme poverty, and food and nutritional insecurity," adding: "We need to change the traditional response strategy and tackle the structural causes of poverty and food insecurity in Central America's Dry Corridor, and not settle for simply mounting a humanitarian response every time an emergency situation occurs."

See: http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/422132/icode/