Webinar: Climate-Smart Investment Portfolios for the Southern Plains in Jamaica

Jamaica’s Southern Plains have the potential to be the breadbasket of Jamaica. These fertile grounds could protect the Caribbean island nation from global food price shocks and reliance on disruption-prone imports.

There is only one problem: The plains are a victim of the vagaries of climate change and do not have enough water to reach their production potential. With the planned arrival of a major irrigation project, experts from the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, the University of the West Indies and The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries are helping farmers augment their climate-smart agriculture capacities to efficiently administer water. Climate change means that solving the Southern Plains’ production problems requires more than just adding water. The lessons learned are broadly applicable across the climate-vulnerable food production areas of the Caribbean. Join our webinar to find out more.

In the webinar, we present findings of the project 'Capacity Building Program to Improve Stakeholder Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Change in Jamaica.' The project was implemented in collaboration between the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, the Department of Geography and Geology at the University of West Indies (UWI), and the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, to climate-proof the ongoing Essex Valley Agricultural Development Project with climate risk assessment, prioritization of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) options, and CSA manuals and training programs to be used for extension service.