The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) and the Pacific Community (SPC) have pledged to collaborate on a 10-year plan, the Pacific Strategic Plan for Agriculture and Fisheries Statistics (P-SPAFS)
The plan aims at strengthening the collection and dissemination of statistics related to food security, agriculture, fisheries, and natural resources to support policy formulation and sector decision making. The P-SPAFS framework was created in recognition of the need for timely, accurate, and comprehensive data to support the national Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) action plans of Pacific Island countries and territories.
"Accurate and comprehensive data is vital for informed decision-making in agriculture and fisheries. Through our collaboration with SPC and the implementation of P-SPAFS, we aim to strengthen the collection and dissemination of statistics to support sustainable development in the Pacific region," noted FAO Subregional coordinator for the Pacific Islands, Xiangjun Yao.
As part of FAO’s ongoing support to P-SPAFS, a regional workshop was held, bringing together representatives from the Pacific Island countries and territories. The workshop aimed to share potential and priority activities identified from previous projects and gather feedback on the priority, feasibility and desirability of potential activities for immediate implementation.
Based on the findings of the workshop and follow-up discussions with individual countries, specific recommendations and requests for technical assistance were made to FAO, which will be addressed through this Technical Cooperation Programme (TCP). Targeted countries include the Cook Islands, Fiji, Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.
These countries will receive technical support in producing sustainable development goal (SDG) target 2.1 indicators and deriving other food security and consumption statistics; strengthening capacities to produce regular, quality agriculture production data; and improving capacities on modern research techniques and technologies related to agriculture statistics.
The capacity development activities will enable countries to produce and report on their own SDG indicators 2.1.1 and 2.1.2 as well as generate indicators on food security and nutrition from their future surveys. The collaboration with SPC ensures that all FAO tools and methodologies comply with established standards and that estimates produced can be compared across countries and over time and can be aggregated for global monitoring.
