About our project

Our Members

Yu-Ming Lu, Mission Chief

Sung-Han Yu, Specialist

Kai-Yu Huang, Specialist

Project Background

In recent years, Caribbean region has been affected by climate change and climate variability. According to the researches done by USAID and World bank, many parameters show that climate change has already caused some obvious influences to this region:

The mean annual temperature has already risen 0.6℃ since 1960.
Seasonal wind speed has increased.
The number of dry days has increased.
The frequency and strength of the tropical storms and hurricanes has increased.

These data shown here are not just hollow numbers. In 2015, a severe drought occurred in St. Kitts and Nevis and caused the total crop output fell by 31.2% from the 2014 figure. In 2017, total 4 hurricanes showed up in Caribbean region in a short period of time and impacted many islands, St. Martin suffered devastating damage during that year. In 2018/08, hurricane Florence stroke south east USA, forcing USA government to evacuate over 1.7 million people. Even so, Florence still killed 15 people and brought serious damage to South Carolina and North Carolina. For people in Caribbean region, the climate change is not only just a issue, it's a true threat that influence the livelihood and safety.

And the future climate in this area is expected to have some projected changes as follows:

In most of the region, the average annual temperature is likely to increase 0.9~1.3℃ by 2050.
Changes in precipitation are projected to vary through this region.
Frequency of catagory 4 and 5 hurricanes are expected to increase by 25~30%
An increase in hot days, with projections indicating that hot days would occur on 25%~65% of days annually by 2060s.

A more unsatble future climate is lying in front of us, it's time for us to take actions and figure out the ways of mitigation. The climate change and the climate variability affect many departments, and agriculture is one of the most fragile department among them. The agriculture in Caribbean already faces siginificant challenges (Climate risk in the eastern and southern caribbean: regional risk profile, USAID, Feburary 2018):

Most farms are small and fragmented.
Industrial farming has become less profitable.
Agricultural labors costs are high.
Agricultural populations are aging.
Traditionally grown crops lack of diversity.

Climate change will make the already brittle agriculture sector even more fragile. To take effective action, an intregation of different kind of mitigation ways are necessary, including facilitate technology development, dissemination and deployment, access to climate finance, revelent aspects of education, training and public awarness.

Tawian, as a country also exposed to many differents kinds of natural disasters during the year, our government has already put a lot effort into many kinds of mitigation measures. In recent years, the disaster prevention and mitigation is becoming more and more important issue. With the help of new technologies, we are able to respond more quickly and accurately. We wish to share our experience in Taiwan to help St. Kitts and Nevis to get more understanding about natural disasters and have better preparation when facing them.

Our Goal

For agriculture sector here in St. Kitts and Nevis, following the closure of 300 year-old sugar industry in 2005, the government has started post-sugar industry diversification program and smallholder agricultural production to facilitate local agriculture transformation. The agriculture sector now in St. Kitts and Nevis are relatively young, many international instituitions such as Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI), Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and Taiwan Technical Mission have cooperated closely with local government to develop good food and feed systems, enhance food and nutrition security and strengthen resiliance under climate change.

To enhance the agricultural adaptive capacity in St. Kitts and Nevis, Taiwan Technical Mission has launched the "St. Kitts and Nevis Enhancing Agricultural Adaptive Capacity to Climate Variability Project" in 2018. We wish to introduce several agricultural mitigation measures to fight against climate variability, including:

Establish local agrometeorological data collecting system. Our project has already set up 4 new agrometeorological weather stations in St. Kitts and Nevis. The newly set weather stations have wireless transmission ability, we're now working on the database sever so that in the future we're able to show real-time data of our stations on the website. We will also share the data we collected with Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH) to help them calibrate the local weather forecast around St. Kitts and Nevis.
Develop and/or introduce crop disaster mitigation and prevention techniques. In order to have better understanding of the crop response under natural disasters, the simulation cultivation trial will be taken. At the same time, we'll introduce new varieties which have good resistance to abiotic stresses, new cultivation management methods, facilities, material and equipment that are beneficial to local farmers under climate change. Some new varieties have already finished the field trial in St. Kitts and Nevis in 2018. Combine the weather data we collected, we will be able to publish crop cultivation calendars for different crops to give local farmers a good reference on their field managements.
Increase the availability of agricultural information. It is always a big issue to help people to get the information they need efficiently, and that is the reason this website is made. We tried to integrate all the useful information we could get on the internet together on this website. In addition, we also cooperate with the ministry of agriculture to broadcast practical agriculture information time by time. Through all these methods, we wish to spread the correct information more quickly and efficiently.

Taiwan Technical Mission has been long collaborating with local government to improve people's well-being in St. Kitts and Nevis. Through this project, we wish to facilitate the research and development that are relating to agriculture and climate change, ensure the knowledge produced is both useful and used by local farmers.

About Us─Taiwan ICDF

The International Cooperation and Development Fund (Taiwan ICDF) is dedicated to boosting socio-economic development, enhancing human resources and promoting economic relations in a range of developing partner countries. We also offer humanitarian assistance and provide aid in the event of natural disasters or international refugee crises.

To carry out our mission, we offer a range of assistance that centers on four core operations: lending and investment, technical cooperation, humanitarian assistance, and international education and training. Our Fund is used to make direct or indirect investments and to finance lending operations. Revenues generated by the Fund are used to support our bilateral or multilateral technical cooperation projects, humanitarian assistance operations and education and training.

Every new project from the TaiwanICDF proceeds according to a rigorous project cycle and is backed by mutual covenants signed in cooperation with relevant stakeholders. Our projects are designed to address the strategic development goals of each of our partner countries, pay due consideration to associated regional trends, and maximize results by employing the right combination of capital and technical cooperation.

Ultimately, our work is tailor-made to the local needs of each partner country. Our assistance covers a variety of contemporary development issues such as environment, public health, agriculture, education and information and communications technology.

We are also acting to improve human resources and build institutional capacity at the TaiwanICDF itself. We believe that as a stronger, more professional organization, we will be better placed to advise decision-making bodies within our government. Efforts to improve our own organization will also help us to deepen the coverage of our projects and transfer technological know-how on to our partners. We aspire to making the most effective use of manpower and resources, and replicating and adapting successful experiences from one partner country to another.

The TaiwanICDF is headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan. As of December 31, 2017, we have 112 domestic employees and 150 staff working at overseas missions.

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