 According to a case study on St. Lucia by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, St. Lucia, like many other small island developing states, due to its geographic location, climate and geology, have also made it susceptible to natural hazards. The island is vulnerable to hydro-meteological and geophysical events, the impacts of which can be severe and pronounced by the island's small economy. Historical information indicates that storm-induced flooding and landslides have been the most likely hydro-meteological impacts affecting St. Lucia. Average annual economic losses associated with extreme hydro-meteological events for the period 1992 to 2011 have been equivalent to roughly 2% of GDP, or about US$26.94 million. However, singular high-impact events can be devastating. Example, Hurricane Island 1980 resulted in damages equivalent to about 60% of GDP, while Hurricane Thomas 2010 resulted in damages estimated at 346.2 million, 43.4% of GDP. In all instances, we have measured economic loss, including the contribution of the agricultural sector to GDP, which now stands at 2% of GDP. In the advent of more frequent and more severe losses to agriculture, including the recent impact of Hurricane Elsa, coupled with minimal to no insurance coverage for farmers, building a resilient agricultural sector is paramount. Therefore, based on the financing commitment received from the Adaptation Fund and the Caribbean Development Bank towards securing this resilience today, it is my honor to welcome each and every one of you to the launch of the Building Resilience for Adaptation to Climate Change and Climate Variability in Agriculture in St. Lucia project. Welcome each and every one. Colleagues, good morning. Chair, having established the list of protocol, I will adopt same. And definitely, ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure, on behalf of the St. Lucia's focal point for the Adaptation Fund, to extend a very warm welcome to each and every one of you to the launch of the Building Resilience for Adaptation to Climate Change and Climate Variability in Agriculture in St. Lucia project. It is a long name, but as the project unfolds, I am sure everyone will become familiar with this name. We all know that this has been a very long-awaited occasion, and having you here with us this morning definitely makes the occasion even more meaningful. We are going through a very challenging time in St. Lucia, and COVID-19 has done nothing else but to pack more on top of everything else. Therefore, it is imperative that we demonstrate to our funding partners that we are not only ready to receive the support that they have generously given to us, but also to give the assurance that the confidence placed in us here in St. Lucia is well-deserving, well-placed, and that we, as a country, we are very much aware of our responsibilities and we are ready to deliver. As a designated national authority for the Adaptation Fund, the Department of Sustainable Development takes the responsibility to maintain an open line of communication with the Adaptation Fund, the executing and implementing agencies here in St. Lucia. This is an extensive project that will have numerous activities. This is not a project that will only benefit the five selected agricultural districts in St. Lucia, but it is intended to be beneficial nationwide. It is a project that we will be taking to the doors of all our farmers, all cooperatives, our agro-processors, our renewable energy technology suppliers, everyone, especially our youth. We take further responsibility as a department with a mandate to facilitate and mobilize support to fulfill our climate change agenda and to ensure that we continue to review and update our policy framework that will help us develop other meaningful initiatives. We look forward to continuing work on our national adaptation planning process, which will bring support in strengthening other sectors. Honourable Ministers, ladies and gentlemen, this project for want of better words has been through the ringer and therefore we are confident that we are implementing a sound, transformative project here in St. Lucia. The efforts of our technical officers, and I say our technical officers, meaning all the officers who have supported the development of this project across all the agencies in St. Lucia, their efforts must certainly be commended. They worked tirelessly along with a consultant who dedicated very, a lot of effort rather, in developing this project. Again, as focal point for the adaptation fund, we look forward to the successful implementation of this project by our agriculture colleagues. We remain committed to support and ensure that we implement a project that will benefit all of St. Lucia. Honourable Ministers, colleagues, invited guests, I thank you, and again, I bid you welcome. Ladies and gentlemen, I must begin by saying that it is indeed a great pleasure to be part of today's ceremony. We received word in 2019 of the proposal, of the approval story of this project, building resilience and adaptation to climate change and climate vulnerability in agriculture in St. Lucia. Today we are elated to see it get off the ground, or take wings as the technical staff in the Department of Sustainable Development would say, to find its place amongst the strategic efforts being pursued in St. Lucia as we seek to build resilience in our agriculture sector that has been had hit time and again by extreme climate events. Indeed, the launch of this project is being done at a time when St. Lucia must demonstrate its fortitude as a country as we find ways to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, which has eaten away at the economic, social, and cultural landscapes. We have confidence that this project will provide meaningful and sustainable benefits to the farmers and community members in the five agriculture regions in which it will be rolled out and by extension to the economy of St. Lucia at large. Many of you may not be aware that this project has its roots in a diagnostic study undertaken in 2015 with the support of the Caribbean Development Bank, a study which determined that St. Lucia has established a well-informed and comprehensive framework for climate change adaptation to support deliberate measures to build and enhance adaptive capacities for climate resilience at all levels. Realizing our vulnerabilities as a small island developing state, this is indicative of the work that has gone into positioning ourselves to respond to the impacts of climate change and equally important positioning ourselves to receive technical, technological capacity building and financial support from the global community. Furthermore, it is clear that the Department of Sustainable Development with great support from fellow agencies like the Department of Agriculture remains committed to ensuring that our policies and strategies remain relevant. We ensure that they articulate our circumstances and that there are congruences with our call for support. This is evident in the post-2015 undertakings such as the development of our national adaptation plan and in this case more specifically the sectoral adaptation strategy and action plan for the agriculture sector. The medium-term development strategy of 2020, sorry, to 2023 recognizes agriculture as one of the key results areas for national and economic development. I repeat, the medium-term development strategy of 2020 to 2023 recognizes agriculture as one of the key results areas for national and economic development. Also, it has quite rightly recognized, sorry, climate change as a component of the disaster risk management, resilience and sustainable development cross-cutting thematic development areas. The NAP process and the medium-term development strategy are highlighted here so that we can be reminded as agencies of the need to continuously identify and pursue the synergies and to seek to align our actions with our priority agendas identified in policy instruments. We must continue to ensure that no sector is left behind and that as a small island nation, we make the best use of our resources and any support that we receive externally. And I think Mrs. Leo spoke eloquently about that when she addressed us a few moments ago. So while tourism is seen as the main revenue owner for the country, the people must be fed and local livelihoods must be sustained by injecting the necessary capital, capacity and other resources. This is the aim of the project we are launching today, which recognizes that if we do not address the impacts that climate change has on our agricultural sector now, the effects will be irreversible, leaving our food security and the livelihoods of many at serious risk. The details and implementation of plans for this project have been well thought out and articulated by various proponents. And as the ceremony progresses, you will learn more about the building of resilience and sustainability in our farming systems, the establishing of agro- businesses and the knowledge management aspect of this project. The Department of Sustainable Development, which I have the pleasure of leading as focal point under designated national authority to the adaptation fund, believes this project will serve St. Lucia well as it will contribute to our economic recovery, especially in our rural areas. And I'm happy to report if you do not know that both myself and Minister Prospect are parliamentary representatives for rural areas in this country. We will continue to support the Department of Agriculture, that is the Department of Sustainable Development, as they take on the responsibility for executing this project, a project that calls for strong and strategic community engagement, management, agency collaboration and monitoring. We are confident that our agriculture colleagues have long prepared for the task and are ready for a well-coordinated implementation of this project. St. Lucia remains grateful to the adaptation fund and we are happy that despite the busy schedule, they found the time to share in this occasion with us. We remain mindful of the conditions of this grant funding, sorry, we remain mindful of the conditions of this grant funding and wish to assure you that we hold in high regard your consideration. The Caribbean Development Bank as our implementing partner is also with us and for that we are grateful. We thank you for helping to make this possible for St. Lucia and for working with us through the various iterations of the final project document. We look forward to the smooth implementation of this long awaited project. The people-centric approach is important to us as we continue to serve our country. The project proposal development phase was an extremely extensive and highly consultative one that was well managed. For this, I first wish to recognize the Caribbean Community Climate Change Center who supported the consultant and let me also recognize the consultant, Dr. Barbara Graham for the excellent work done and the support given to the departments of agriculture and sustainable development. As we move forward with this project, let us do so with a spirit of professionalism and collaboration. We can only achieve the objectives of this project by working collaboratively. No one agency in government has all the resources required for success to be ripped. Let us keep at heart the interest and growth of St. Lucia, the country we love. Thank you very much. On behalf of the government of St. Lucia, it gives me great pleasure as the Minister for Agriculture to address this distinguished audience on the launch of the Building Resilience for Adaptation to Climate Change and Climate Variability in Agriculture in St. Lucia project. The government will be the beneficiary of a 9,153,000 $246 grant from the special funds resources of the Caribbean Development Bank allotted from the adaptation fund. St. Lucia, like other small island developing states, continues to be ravaged by the impacts of climate change, often in the form of floods, drought and hurricanes. The most recent occurrence being the passage of Hurricane Elsa on July 2nd, 2021, when the agricultural sector suffered approximately $35 million in losses. This project seeks to enhance food production systems and safeguard livelihoods from climate-related threats. As such, activities will be undertaken as part of three major components which include one, building climate resilience and sustainability of farming systems through interventions for water security, soil conservation and management. Integration of renewable and other energy efficient practices, intensive agriculture value chains, and three, knowledge management and transfer to improve adaptive capacities. Component 1 is in perfect alignment with the ministry current thrust towards poverty alleviation in keeping with the sustainable development goals SDGs 1 and 2 of the United Nations. This is also reflected in the food security component that is now prominently featured in the new nomenclature of the ministry. Food security will be more vigorously targeted and prioritized along the pillars of food availability, food accessibility, food utilization, and food supply stability. The key strategy which will be employed is the utilization and promotion of climate smart agriculture practices to mitigate against the negative impacts on the availability of food due to climate change. Noticeably, the project seeks to build on existing efforts, soil and slope stabilization being done by the Forestry Department under the John Compton Dam project and the IWECO project in areas of Millet and Fonsezac respectively. Also targeted are water conservation measures to complement some of the work that are currently ongoing with respect to rainwater harvesting initiatives, increasing water storage capacity, and an enhancement of irrigation systems under the Seven Crops Project and the Banana Productivity Improvement Project. I wish to express on behalf of the Government of St. Lucia, sincere appreciation to the Adaptation Fund, especially to the Board and all those involved in the approval process who ensured that St. Lucia was able to secure his grant. A warm thank you to the Caribbean Development Bank. The Bank and the Government has had a long history of engagement in developing projects and more recently in resilient infrastructure projects under the Build Back Better Umbrella. So it is very exciting to partner in the area of resilient agriculture. Special mention of the Department of Sustainable Development and the tremendous efforts towards solidifying this agreement and of course the staff of the Department of Agriculture who remain committed to further advance, to the further advancement of the sector. Now that the necessary approvals are in place from the fund and more recently from the bank, I urge all the respective agencies to move swiftly to ensure that the necessary conditions are met to facilitate this busment of the grant proceeds for the expeditious implementation of the project deliverables. This project is not merely about spending nine million dollars, United States dollars rather, but it's about transforming the agricultural sector in St. Lucia and improving the lives of our citizens. For the sake of our food security and continued growth of the agricultural sector, we must all perform our duties diligently and always remember to put the people first in all that we do. I want to take the opportunity as the new minister for agriculture to indicate that the ministry has the capacity within the ministry to undertake a project of this nature. And I just wish that the project will be successfully implemented and at the end of the day, we can boast that we benefited from almost nine million U.S. dollars to help address the problems that confront us in St. Lucia. Thank you very much. It is my distinct pleasure today to briefly take you on a journey that will allow you to see how this project has developed over time. You would have heard it alluded to by our ministers, PSN orders, but it has had a very long gestation period dating far back as 2014-2015. And so over the next few minutes, I ask for your attention as we take a brief look at what this project is about and what we intend to achieve with this project. So this is according to the adaptation fund standard regular project, which is anywhere from 10 million U.S. dollars on under. We are the beneficiaries here in St. Lucia, very specifically the agricultural sector. The title of the project by now, you know it's a long one, building resilience for adaptation to climate change and climate variability in agriculture in St. Lucia, we have our implementing entity, the Caribbean Development Bank. We also have our national designated authority is the Sustainable Development Department. Our problem statement was in the area of looking at the agricultural sector, recognize it contributes to about 22 percent for the incomes, household food security and livelihood security, 22 percent of our population benefits from that. Of course the productivity of livelihood is very vulnerable. And of course you would have mentioned to some of the recent storms like Elsa and way back as 1996 and we had Debbie and Thomas and all the rest. And of course we've recognized that there is significant decreases in annual rainfall here in St. Lucia. But in the midst of this significant decrease in rainfall, we also are having intense rains, seasons where we get landslipage, road blockage, we get a lot of problems with losses in the agricultural sector, not to mention pests and disease problems and the likes. We also thought before the challenges including incomplete data sets in many cases when you seek for data related to problems from climate change and climate variability, we find that they are missing data sets and so this project is looking at trying to resolve that particular situation. For this particular project, it has geographical limitations locally. And so starting on the west coast as far as Shwazel, this project will cover from Shwazel, Souffre, Canary's, Ancelary coming into Kuldisak and of course going across to communities in Babunodibara and surrounding areas. The project has been conceptualized with three broad areas and these three broad objectives include contributing positively to the growth indicators for agriculture, looking at the midterm development strategy and plan that was developed in 2012-2016. Of course, we recognise that the times have changed so that is also going to be reviewed in terms of where we are taking a look at the sectoral strategy and action plan and the new findings that we have in those particular plans. The other area of objective that we have is to build resilience in the agriculture sector for livelihood security through enhanced adaptive capacities for climate change and climate variability. Of course, the third objective is to build adaptive capacities of agro-ecosystems, livelihoods to threat. So we are looking at agro-processing and the likes. There are three broad integrated components. The first component is about building resilience and sustainability of farming systems through interventions for water security, soil conservation and management. We recognise that we have issues in the dry season with availability of water so we will be looking at rainwater harvesting among other things. Establishing green agro parks including the use of solar energy to increase efficiency. The agro park concept has been implemented in nearby Jamaica and so we have this country and the example that they have set for us in order for us to move forward with that particular component. And then we have of course the knowledge management aspect of it where we are looking at building up knowledge within the sector, building the capacity to respond to climate change and climate variability. I'm going to take the next couple of minutes just to give you the broad project goals and the outcomes based on these three broad areas that have been identified here today. So the overall project goal really is to build resilience in St Lucia's agriculture sector for livelihood security through enhanced adaptive capacities. What we hope to come out of that the overall outcomes is to increase the resilience of rural farm communities, increasing farm productivity, water and livelihood security and reducing vulnerability to natural hazards, climate variability and climate change. Of course at the end of this process we anticipate that we will have enhanced national capacity to plan, implement climate resilience and adaptive actions in the agriculture sector to transform the lives of the rural population. So this is this is the actual over overworking outcomes and anticipated outputs. Component number one that looks at building resilience and sustainability of farming systems through interventions for water scarcity and soil conservation. We're looking at increased farm productivity as an outcome. We're looking at enhanced livelihood and income security and of course we're looking at getting access to areas where farmers have abandoned or lands have been under utilised and getting those into agricultural production. That would include doing stuff like getting access to on farm water supplies through rainwater harvesting. There will be some investments made in best loop rainwater harvesting as well. Of course the component will also be looking at farmers and staff of the department being trained in land management for climate resilience. Component number two that looks at establishing green agro parks including the use of solar energy for increased efficiency in resilient farming. We recognise that many people are talking about hydroponics and aquaponics not recognising that the high energy costs associated with these new production systems is prohibitive and so through this project we are anticipating to introduce some of the renewable energy systems like perhaps solar and wind energy to a less extent and see how this could contribute to reducing the cost associated with energy for running these new investments in agriculture. Of course the same outcome here is increased productivity and enhanced livelihood security. For this particular component the major investments include two green agro parks established one on the west coast and one on the east coast of the island and there will be two HASAP certified agro processing facilities that are going to be established under this particular component. And of course the third component which is knowledge management which looks at managing the transfer and building up the knowledge capacity of both farmers, technicians and all the stakeholders within the sector. This is geared towards sensitizing people in terms of what climate change is actually doing to the sector and the impacts of it and so there's going to be a gender sensitive baseline developed and let me say at this point that one of the terms or conditions for the approval of this project is that we will be rolling out a gender assessment and an environmental and social management plan. This is part of the first activities that's going to take place within the first quarter of the implementation of this particular project. We also will be looking at rehabilitated infrastructure creating climate change learning and interpretation centers. So all of these are going to be part of this third component of the project. The project implementation arrangements. So we have the implementing entity which is the Caribbean Development Bank. We have our national designated authority which is the Department of Sustainable and actually the Department or the Ministry of Agriculture will be executing. The project does have a project implementation unit and I'll give you a little bit of a description of what is happening in that particular unit. There will also be a project steering committee that is going to be providing direction and governance for the implementation of the project. So the human resources very quickly as we continue the conversation. The project secretariat will include a project manager, finance, personnel procurements, personnel administrative and executive personnel and monitoring and evaluation personnel. So these would form the core group within the project management unit. There will be a number of consultancies recruited under the particular project including agro park managers, agro processing facility managers, knowledge management resource person, human and finance resource persons. We're also going to be doing a vulnerability analysis and disaster risk for disaster risk management. We also are going to be getting some support from UWE including a climatologist and plant scientist who's going to be participating in this process as well. There's the opportunity for an economist and also gender specialist to be part of the consultations for this particular project. A number of personnel within the Ministry of Agriculture and other allied agencies will be co-opted and assigned to provide the technical and administrative support that is required for the effective operations of the project management unit and also for the implementation of the project. Of course as you would have heard intimated early on this project is going to be running for a period of about four years and we anticipate that at our technical meeting that is intended to be on the 16th of this month that you'll get more insights into the financial disbursements and other arrangements for the project. As we speak in terms of where we're at, there has been a finalization and signing of agreements between the adaptation fund and CDB in terms of the management of the fund so CDB essentially is going to be managing that fund. The agreement between the Caribbean Development Bank and the government of St. Lucia has been prepared and it is currently with our AG's chambers Ministry of Economic Development for review and for sign off, we anticipate that this is going to be expedited so that we could get the project implementation up and running. A number of terms of references, of reference has been prepared for the project manager, specialist, environmental and social management plan. These terms of reference have been prepared and we are immediately after this particular event are going to be sending out expressions of interest so that we could get persons on board and engage for these particular assignments. So we're looking at engagement of a project manager, engagement of consultants for the gender assessment, environmental and social management plan, the finalization of the secretariat for the project management unit and of course finalization of the project steering committee and the technical workshop that we anticipate will take place in the next couple weeks. These essentially is what where the project is at, there you go and we're looking forward with eager anticipation to get off the ground, to get the document signed and of course put all the other arrangements in place so that we could proceed with actual project implementation. So with that let me thank you and thank PS for this opportunity to give you this brief insight into the project. Thank you ladies and gentlemen.