Integrating meteorological and agricultural technologies to assist St. Kitts and Nevis in climate adaptation and resilience
To enhance St. Kitts and Nevis’ agricultural adaptive capacity to extreme weather, the International Cooperation and Development Fund (TaiwanICDF) commissioned Taiwan Technical Mission to work with the Government of St. Kitts and Nevis in implementing the Enhancing Agricultural Adaptive Capacity to Climate Variability Project. From February of this year to date, the Mission has set up four agricultural weather stations in the most needed areas with expertise from the Council of Agriculture (COA), Executive Yuan, and the Central Weather Bureau (CWB), and has initiated real-time data collection. Many distinguished guests were present at the handover ceremony held on November 30, including Honorable Tom Lee, resident ambassador of the Republic of China (Taiwan) to St. Kitts and Nevis, Honorable Eugene Hamilton, minister of Agriculture, the project coordinator, the representative of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), extension officers, farmers, and the media.
Minister Hamilton said the country’s scarce resources for agricultural development have been further affected by climate change in recent years. These new stations will complement the existing ones, which are not dedicated to agricultural use, and this project is expected to help agencies link agricultural activity with meteorological data, providing farmers with early warnings of weather variations. Ambassador Lee explained that, besides facility provision, the project provides agricultural officers with training opportunities in Taiwan and dispatches Taiwanese experts to St. Kitts and Nevis on a regular basis to conduct technical consultation and capacity building. All these efforts, along with the agricultural information platform and various messaging channels under development, will facilitate timely and efficient information dissemination for crop disaster mitigation and prevention for St. Kitts and Nevis.
In addition, the TaiwanICDF held a side event during the 24th Conference of the Parties (COP24) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Poland, using this project as case study to share experiences with representatives worldwide. In the future, the TaiwanICDF will continue to draw on Taiwan’s advantages in meteorological and agricultural technologies to assist partner countries in promoting climate adaptation and resilience.