FAO-UNDRR Press conference 19 March 2021

Thank you very much for being with us.

Today is Friday, 19th of March for this press conference, virtual, where we have the pleasure to have both the Food and Agriculture Organisation and the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction with us today to launch the FAO report The Impact of Disasters and Crises on Agriculture and Food Security 2021.

We will start with the introductory remarks of the three speakers.

I'll give the floor to each one of you, one after the other, and then we will open the floor to questions from the journalist of the Geneva Press Corps.

So we'll start now with Mr Maximo Torero.

Mr Torero, you are the Chief Economist of the FAO.

I'll give you the floor first to introduce the report.

Thank you, thank you, thank you so much and let me just share a very brief presentation to summarise what we are doing.

So this year 2021 edition of the report emphasises several things.

Losses in terms of nutrients and losses of course, the measurement of the losses in agriculture, which is central.

The impact of disasters in forestry, fisheries and agriculture sub sectors.

The impact of animal disease, locals outbreaks and climate change and the use of new technologies like remote sensing to be able to gather data real time, which is so important today to be able to receive to to to get the results we want.

But let me just bring some of the core elements of of this report.

First, we measured the damage and loss in agricultural share of the total damage and loss in all sectors from 2008 to 2018 is 26%.

But when we just focus on agriculture, industry, tourism and commerce, the total share of the loss in agriculture is 63%.

So it's a significant share and what that's why it's so important what we are presenting in this report.

But not only that, when we look at the total number of the losses and based on the estimates we have been building between 2008 and 2018, it is approximately 108 billion U.S.

dollars that was lost as a result of declines in crop and livestock production in least developed countries alone and low middle income countries.

Just to put this as a comparison, this is the value of the agricultural production of Germany, Italy and Ireland in 2018.

It is 2/3 of the value of agricultural exports on South America in 2018.

And South America is one of the key exports of food in the world.

Converted into calories, this means 108 billion.

These $108 billion correspond to a total of 6.9 trillion kilocalories per year, which is the annual calorie intake of 7 million adult persons, 7 million adult persons.

And, and, and of course if we look at the overall losses in the world, including upper middle income and **** income countries, the total comes out in agriculture to $280 billion.

So $108 billion for least developed countries and lower middle income countries and $280 billion for all the world.

Now within the $108 billion, the composition is 330 billion for Africa, 29 billion for Latin America and Caribbean and 49 billion for Asia, which is also important.

And finally, before I pass to my colleagues, based on the same estimates, we found that drought turns out to be the most destructive force for agriculture.

Drought causes an estimate of 37 billion in crop and livestock production loss in 2008 and 2018.

In the least developed countries and low middle income countries or 34% of the total estimated loss in agriculture.

Flats and storms are the next more relevant cause of loss in agriculture.

And in Africa, crop and livestock loss saw peaks in 2011, 2012 20/15/2017, mostly driven by recurring drought episodes in the Sahel and Horn regions and by both drought and floods in Southern Africa.

In Southern Africa in 2015, in Latin America and the Caribbean in peaking 2012 and 2014 following the Sever La Nina related drought, especially affecting Central America.

In Asia, losing agricultural production saw as a spike in 2015, which reflects the massive disaster across the region including the Nepal earthquake, the monsoon flooding in Myanmar, Bangladesh and India, and the widespread flooding in Chennai and India.

It might also be mentioned that drought affect mostly agriculture much more than other sectors.

Out of the total impact of the road, 82% affects agriculture and only 18% affect over other productive sectors.

So this just is some of the core results of this document and thank you very much for your time.

OK, I think I'm on.

Thank you very much, Mr Serrano.

And I would like now to give the floor to Dominique Virgin, who is the Director of the FAO Liaison Office in Geneva and Director in charge of the FAO Office of Emergencies and Resilience.

Dominique, you have the floor.

Thank you very much, Alessandra.

And I'm good to have the opportunity to talk to you.

Obviously, my colleague Maximo presented the data contained in this report.

I mean, it is very clear that I think at no other point in history we have seen a great food system confronted with such a heavy combination of old and new threats.

I mean drought, floodings, mega fires, extreme weather events, desert locust, and now even the, the of course the impact of COVID.

But in this report here we make it also very clear that the annual appearance of disaster is no more than three times what it used to be in the in the 17 and 80s.

And then, as Maximo said, of course, over 1/4 of all damages were absorbed by the agriculture sector.

But this being said, this is important also to keep in mind that disaster take lives, but that they also devastate agricultural likelihood and inflict economic consequences at the household, community, national and even regional level.

I think for us to be clear, I mean globally there are around 2.5 billion people who, who mostly in 60% of them in, in low income developing countries and who 2.5 billion people would depend on agriculture for their daily food, for their income and at the end of the day for their survival.

And for vulnerable countries, those countries that are already dealing with fragility, with protracted crisis, conflict and environmental degradation, the growing frequency that we have seen intensity and complexity of these disaster is like at the end of the day a disaster crisis within the crisis.

These additional shocks increase both chronic and acute food insecurity.

In countries with pre-existing food crisis context, these shocks deepen acute food insecurity and increase destitution, loss of assets, which often are irreversible, such as the one we have seen for example, in, in many contexts.

And if you remember in 2011 in the context of the of the of the Somalia famine, people lost their assets in an irreversible way and for them to come back.

It's extremely difficult if it is clear in the meantime that if disaster cannot be avoided, communities can be made resilient, resilient, less exposed and, and basically and the impact of disaster can be greatly mitigated.

So a report like this one, you may think, well, it's only data.

No, it's much more than that.

Report such as the one which has presented to you and basically the quantification of the loss it contains is not only made as an assessment of the arm done by disaster.

It is also bringing the evidence decision makers need to Orient policy decisions to guide investments, ensuring good value for taxpayer money.

And then it also a key tool ultimately to evaluate the effectiveness of disasters, Disaster Risk Reduction strategies that are being put in place.

It shows how important it is to act now, make a real change during this decade for action if we are indeed to reach our goal of 0 anger and eradication of of poverty.

More development policies are risk informed, but we need to further increase this number of of risk informed development policies.

There are good early warning systems that are in place but and even we see in more and more countries for example, season long weather forecasts that are available but they need to be applied more broadly.

We have the knowledge many Disaster Risk Reduction good practises exist and have proven their effectiveness with excellent return on investment.

We also see the return of investment of acting early before a ****** becomes a full blown disasters.

The Desert Locust response last year and still ongoing is a good example of that.

So a lot of piloting has been successfully done, but now it is the time.

It is the time for scale up and I would say scaling up for a resilient future.

Thank you very much, Alessandra.

Thank you very much, Dominique, for this introductory remarks.

And now I have the pleasure to give the floor to Loretta Heber Girarde, who's the Chief support and monitoring of Sentai Framework Implementation Branch of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction Director.

You have the floor.

Well, thank you very much and thank you for this opportunity to share some reflections on the launch of the 2021 edition of the FAO Report.

The date for this launch is really well chosen because just yesterday marked the 6th anniversary of the adoption of the Sendai Framework, which you may all know is the global blueprint on how to reduce disaster losses.

You may also remember that the report was launched in Sendai, Japan, which at that time was just recovering from a major earthquake in the tsunami that killed 18,000 people.

Now, the drafters of the Sendai Framework recognised that there was an extremely important link between disasters and agriculture.

The framework specifically recognises the need to strengthen and broaden international efforts aimed at eradicating hunger and poverty through disastrous production.

Unfortunately, this FAO report is further evidence that the world is losing ground in the battle to reduce disaster losses.

We're still not acting on early warning and we know that development activities are creating new risks.

We're not managing the existing level of risk that we have.

In short, we are failing to invest adequately in disaster prevention.

The ongoing impact of disasters on agriculture in developing but also in developed countries is like is now being compounded by other threats such as the impact of COVID-19, which has not an effect on livelihoods, food systems and global supply chains.

And as the report makes crystal clear, climate change is fuelling more intense and more frequent extreme weather events.

And we're seeing decade old predictions about climate change coming to fruition much earlier than we had expected.

Yet we're not ready to deal with the consequences.

Extreme weather events have almost doubled over the last 20 years.

Just to give you some idea, we went from 3600 climate related events between 1980 and 1999 to over 6600 during the 2000 to 2019.

We have every indication that this will continue to rise.

Similarly, the last 20 years has seen the number of major floods more than double from 1400 to over 3200.

And it's not surprising that agriculture therefore is the most affected by such events.

But we shouldn't forget the cascading impacts.

Food security, nutrition, health.

The Sendai conference took place at a time when memories were still very fresh about the famine that struck Somalia between October 2010 and April 2012, which killed an estimated 260,000 people, and over half of these were children under the age of five.

At the time I was a humanitarian aid worker in the Horn of Africa, but we all knew at that time that much more could have been done to save lives in Somalia if early warnings had been listened to and acted upon.

So 10 years later, as I read this report from FAOI, have to ask myself, what are we learning from such devastating events and when are we going to see the type of political world and leadership and resources that are needed to avoid such future disasters?

We're all painfully aware of the fact that 88 million people are suffering from acute hunger, including in situations that are facing multiple threats, not only from extreme weather.

They are in conflict settings like Syria and Yemen, which are among the most drought affected countries in the world.

And these countries are also impacted by COVID.

Unfortunately, few countries have the means to understand, let alone mitigate, such interconnected risks and compounded vulnerabilities.

But it is at all bad news.

As we enter into the 7th year of Sendai Framework implementation, we are seeing commitment at national and local levels to improve understanding of disaster risk and to also strengthen risk governance.

There are now 101 UN Member States that have put in place national strategies for Disaster Risk Reduction that are seeking to prevent new risks and reduce existing risks.

And we're also seeing progress in Sendai Framework monitoring.

We have over 120 countries that are now reporting against all of the targets of the Sendai Framework.

Some of the recent data that we collected in the Sendai Framework Monitor really provides further evidence to the FAO report.

It tells us, for example, that in 2019 alone, 67% of all direct economic losses were in the agriculture sector.

And as national reporting improves for Sendai Monitor, we can expect these types of figures, unfortunately that to increase.

But we do have a problem and that is that gathering disaster data is still a challenge and we really do need to invest more in understanding the disaster impacts that are happening.

And more effort really does need to be put into national information systems for collecting and reporting disaster loss, not only for agriculture, but across all of the sectors.

We do know that investing in risk reduction can yield great outcomes.

And even though we can see that economic impacts are growing from disasters, we are also seeing significant reductions in loss of life from extreme weather events, largely due to investments in early warning preparedness and response.

But there's no doubt we really need to act now.

As we've just heard, we need to scale up and strengthen our risk management institutions so that we're not blindsided by future events in the way that we were just blindsided, unfortunately, by the COVID-19 pandemic.

We know that COVID-19 is what we call a systemic risk, but other types of systemic risks could be the trigger for a famine.

For example, for drivers such as drought and breakdown in global supply chains, disease outbreaks and conflict could combine to create acute food insecurity.

So to end, I'd just like to let you know that UNDRR will be publishing later this year.

In June, we will be releasing a special report on drought and this is under the banner of our global assessment report.

And this special report will really enhance our understanding of drought, including it's far reaching impacts, which we believe to date have been underestimated.

And we're hoping that this evidence that we'll be bringing to the table will further enrich the debate and search for solutions in the areas that have been highlighted in this FAO report.

So again, my congratulations and thank you.

Thank you very much, Loretta, for for this introductory remarks.

And I take the opportunity to remind the journalist that on the occasion of the solemn commemoration with the 10th anniversary of the Great E Japan Earthquake and tsunami, the UN Secretary General also called countries to plan, invest and give early warnings and provide education on what to do in order to prevent and manage disasters and indicated this entire framework for Disaster Risk Reduction as the global blueprint for a safer world.

So now I will open the floor to questions from the journalist.

Let me see on the platform if there's any hand raised and I recognise Lisa Schlein from Voice of America.

Lisa, you have the floor.

Yes, thank you and hello everybody.

This is a very complex issue and I seriously don't know where to begin to ask you questions about it, but I'll try my best.

Prevention is the best cure, but nobody ever listens.

And first of all, I'd like to know what the outlook, if you have an outlook for this year in terms of what the hunger, how many people might actually be affected by hunger because of the growing disasters and the neglect of doing anything about this?

And you talk about the need to act now we're talking about different kinds of disasters and the they demand different kinds of actions.

So what would you say are some of the most important actions that need to be taken now in terms of drought, which is already occurring, locus which is already occurring.

So maybe the the *** has already left the barn and there's not very much that you can do.

And sorry, one more thing.

But you also talk about the need to invest.

I mean, yes, these are mainly poor countries.

[Other language spoken]

How can they invest?

How much money is actually needed and who is there to help?

Because, you know, countries have problems and they're becoming kind of stingy.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you very much, Lisa.

There are many questions here indeed.

So I would like to ask our speakers who wants to start and then obviously the others can also add comments if they wish.

Mr Torreira, you want to start on that?

[Other language spoken]

The question in terms of how many people will be add to the to the 690 million people undernourished today reported by the Sophie 2020, our estimations is up to 132 million people will move into undernourishment.

This is chronic undernourishment.

OK, So 132 more million people which is dramatic very far from achieving this year too.

And also we know estimations from from the world band that 108 million people could move into extreme poverty which is highly correlated with with undernourishment and that's also dramatic because we are losing more than a decade now.

I think that that's put clearly why we need to act now.

I think it's, it's central that we act now and, and what are the major actions?

First, I think this report is raising one very important issue, data and it was raised by by other colleagues here with us is the director of the Statistics division, Rosa Rosa Mocayo, which is part of the leading group behind this report.

And, and this is because we believe that we need real time data and we are doing an effort to come with these numbers because we need to know the numbers so that countries understand and ministers of finance understand that they need to invest in avoiding this to happen from the future.

And that is linked to your other question is investment.

And we need investment in research and development.

We are clearly seeing that the drought is a problem.

[Other language spoken]

34% of the cases is because of the drought.

And we have technology, we have varieties, we have innovation that can happen.

We have ways to irrigate areas which are facing drought and insurance, we have technology and insurance, but the reinsurance is too expensive because of lack of data.

We cannot estimate the loss function and therefore it's very difficult for countries, especially poor countries, to have insurance mechanisms in place.

So there are many things that we can act, and we have to be predictive.

We have to create indicators that give predictability so we can tell countries when they could be facing a significant choke and what to do with it.

And there is technology to do that.

The FAO is developing a situation room after what we learned from COVID-19 that is bringing all our early 1 insistence, but with the aim of having some predictive power.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you very much, Mr Toreiro.

[Other language spoken]

Maybe you want to add something.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you for those.

[Other language spoken]

I think one of the things that we're recommending to countries is they look at risks in isolation of each other.

You mentioned a few of them focus truck, but clearly that they employ more multi hazard approaches trying to understand at a systemic level these risks are interconnected to each other.

So really we're promoting multi cycle, multi hazard approaches to to risk.

You asked the question of how much money is needed and you you've got an answer to that.

But it's not just a question of investing money in Disaster Risk Reduction.

It's also looking at the type of development decisions that are being made, which are often being made with a very good understanding of the risks that are being created.

And this could be as simple as where a new airport is put is constructed or roads are being constructed.

So what we're really calling for is risk informed development, that before development decisions are made, make sure that we really understand the risks that we're taking not only today, but also the risks that climate change is bringing down the line.

And that will go a long way as well to reducing disaster risks.

In terms of data, it's a very important issue.

We are working within the UN system to increase countries ability to collect disaster loss data.

But we see some cases even when they have disaster loss data, they're not using this data to make decisions.

So it's not just a question of getting the information, it's using that information in a way that will really lead to that risk informed development that I was just mentioning.

[Other language spoken]

And Dominique, you have your finger raised.

[Other language spoken]

Oh, thank you very much.

And just to try to compliment a little bit all the rich comment that have been made.

Well in terms of the outlook, I don't know if it's me, but we are most talk about for very Dominic, sorry, we have lost you for a few seconds.

Can you please repeat the sentence?

Yes, yes, No, I was saying that of course there has been already very rich comments that were made.

[Other language spoken]

Let let me try to turn off the the camera perhaps.

[Other language spoken]

And then it might be better.

Yeah, that's that's definitely better.

[Other language spoken]

Well, there, there was already very, very OK, OK, thank you.

So there were already very rich comments that were made.

We are in most spoke about the chronic food insecurity.

We are very concerned acute, I acute food insecure.

Dominique, I'm I'm sorry, but it really comes out broken.

I don't know if you could, I don't know if you are on a, on a landline or on Wi-Fi, but it, it is really hard to understand what, what you're saying altogether.

Maybe you want to disconnect and reconnect.

That could be sometimes it works.

And in the meantime, I will ask the journalist if there is any other journalist who would like to ask a question.

I see Lisa has a follow up and then we'll come back directly to Dominique, so maybe he can answer both questions.

Lisa, go ahead with your follow up, please.

[Other language spoken]

I'm wondering whether you have some advice on how to help countries in real time.

For instance, right now Somalia is in in is in a crisis in terms of drought, and it has all of the other problems of conflict and on and on and on.

And there's locust and so forth.

Besides throwing money at them in order to give them the food that they need and so forth, are there measures that the country can take in order to mitigate what is happening right now in real time?

[Other language spoken]

I see that Dominique has reconnected.

Maybe we can start with you, Dominique, if you want to, to answer the questions from Mr from before.

And also now she has added while you were reconnecting about the situation in Somalia.

What can be done concretely instead of just, you know, putting money in order to save the people from the draught classes in the in the short term?

[Other language spoken]

Yeah, for the moment, yes.

[Other language spoken]

No, what I was saying very, very quickly indeed.

As Maximo mentioned, increase in level of undernourishment, we are also concerned with **** acute food insecurity, the type of food insecurity that is due to shocks.

They were very **** level already reported last year, 135 million.

We know this is increasing, but this is indeed the outlook is is concerning.

We'll be showing in April a new report on acute food insecurity, **** acute food insecurity.

The second thing I wanted to to say is that and there was a question on the investments and saying that countries are coming kind of stingy.

It was said and here really the comment I would like to make is that what we are proposing actually is a smart investment, investments that are value for money.

I mean, for example, we know that in the face of disasters we need to apply Disaster Risk Reduction strategies.

We have documented, we have sets of good Dr practises that shows that if you invest $1.00 in these practises, you can save on average 3.7 dollars.

In terms of humanitarian response, that is avoided in the same way, I mean where we know that when we do anticipatory action.

So it means that when we act on on basis of early warning before a ****** turns into a disaster, we can have even larger return on investment.

For example, in the case of the desert Lotus crisis, we have acted early to control the locust population and the result is that we have avoided the the COP losses for a value of four, 4 million tonnes of Cops have been avoided in terms of of losses.

This is enough to feed about about 34 million people in the own of Africa and Yemen, whereas a value of about $1.5 billion.

So it, it means, but yes, countries are becoming, they are, they are constraints, they have a, they are challenged also in their own economies.

And This is why they need to go towards that sort of very smart investment.

When it comes to, to Somalia, I think it is very interesting the case of of Somalia and, and as was said, we, we learned a lot in 2011.

What we saw is that people lost their livelihood assets, they had to move and they, they basically lost all their livestock.

And what we found is that many of these people, for many of these people, it was virtually impossible to recover after the after the crisis because they had lost everything.

So in 2017, the the international community, when there was again a drought situation and the risk of famine, the international community acted early on a no regret basis, which enabled us to, to really support the livelihood of these communities where they were, and therefore to reduce the distance of, of displacement and to reduce the depletion of assets.

So this this shows that and therefore the people were able to bounce back earlier in the same way.

Now there is, there is very interesting work ongoing with OTA and for example the World Bank exactly on anticipatory action in in Somalia to really be able to act early to avoid again population sliding very far in terms of **** acute food insecurity.

But it remains that indeed resilient investment even in this context remain needed and are, as I was saying, very smart investment.

Thank you, very, thank you very much.

Maximus, would you like to add something on the drought in some of you?

No, I want to add 22 comments.

One which this report should not be taken as an exposed measure of the losses.

That's not the idea.

This report is to be taken as what we are losing because we are not acting earlier.

And for ministers of finance and for IFIS to understand that there is a need to do what Dominique was saying and to have anticipatory action and to be preventive.

This is so important right now because IMF, World Bank and other Ifis are coming out with this recover, building back better and recovery investments.

And they are using very nice words, green recovery and so on and so forth.

But I think it's more than nice words.

We need to carefully assess where we can invest in which countries so that we avoid this to happen from the future and developed countries have to help developing countries.

There is no option in this type of investment.

And I think this is a priority because the returns could be huge.

So it's an economically extremely profitable investment if it is done properly.

I mean, historically we have failed because we keep having the same levels.

So if you tell me that the chalk is a chalk because of an an earthquake or an uncertainty, which I cannot model the probability of what will happen, I will understand.

But we're talking of chocks that we know that they will be happening like the roads.

So that again reflects on how bad we are using our resources, which are extremely scarce.

And if we're going to build back better, we better take care of this and we better name look at the profitability of this.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you very much.

And Loretta, just show your hand if if you want to add something, any other question for our speakers from the journalist here in Cheneva.

Let me see if there's any hand up in the on the platform.

I don't see any further requests for the floor from the journals.

So I think we could thank very much our our speakers today, Maximo Torreira, Dominique Bourgeon, Loretta Heber and indeed, as as you said, let's hope that this report that you are launching today will really indeed nurture the debate and the action above all on the disaster in crisis on agriculture and food security.

Thank you very much to you all.

Thanks for having a brief the journalist in Geneva and have a nice day and a nice weekend.

[Other language spoken]