During CWA 2024, we intend to spotlight our innovative work under the Sargassum Products for Climate Resilience in the Caribbean Project, funded by the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. This project intervention is a proactive response to addressing the climate-related phenomenon of Sargassum inundations which has been plaguing our region since 2011. Using science, technology, and evidence-based decision-making, the CRFM, with support from the New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research Limited (PFR), has been seeing major progress with this regional intervention which addresses the Sargassum inundations through converting the seaweed into fertilizer and compost for the agriculture sector. The spotlight on the CRFM-PFR Sargassum Products for Climate Resilience fits well within the CWA 2024 theme of climate-smart agriculture for a sustainable future, which is centered on climate-smart actions to enhance and integrate methods to improve soils, biofertilizers and chemicals, water availability and conservation, crop resilience, biodiversity, ecology, and climate financing.

Our fishers’ forum will be focused on key issues of importance to small-scale fisheries, including insurance to improve the sector’s resilience, as we work to advance our collaborative efforts to implement the CNFO/CRFM Small-Scale Fisheries Action Plan 2023-2025: Contributing to Achieving the 25% Reduction by 2025 in the Caribbean Community Food Import Bill. In April 2024, the Ministerial Council of the CRFM also passed a resolution approving the implementation of this Action Plan, which charts a progressive course of action in response to the mandate by the CARICOM Heads of Government at the Thirty-Third Inter-Sessional Meeting held in March 2022, to reduce the region’s food import bill by 25% by the year 2025 (called “Vision 25 by 2025”).