Business

Coconut risk management and mitigation manual finalised

December 16, 2018 4:45 pm

Twenty-seven experts and stakeholders from the coconut industry

Twenty-seven experts and stakeholders from the coconut industry finalised the “Coconut Risk Management and Mitigation Manual for the Pacific”.

This took place in a workshop in Nadi earlier this week.

The training was a follow-up of the successful workshop organised by the Pacific Community’s Coconut Industry Development Programme in April, resulting in participants agreeing on twenty-four technical recommendations and an online survey about incentives and risks disseminated to more than a thousand coconut stakeholders worldwide in June this year.

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The event focused on training regional participants on risk mitigation in the Pacific’s coconut sector, work with agriculture officers, entomologists, scientists, researchers and entrepreneurs from fourteen Pacific island nations to complete the manual.

This is what the Pacific countries can use to strengthen their coconut industry.

Senior Researcher from the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development, Dr. Roland Bourdeix, says coconut is one of the Pacific’s most valuable resource at a commercial and a subsistence level.

Dr Bourdeix says a recent risk assessment estimated that Pacific island countries suffer $US284 million in economic losses from natural disasters annually.

He adds risks like these that pertain to climate change and hazards constitute only four of the 38 identified risks to the Pacific’s coconut industry.