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Sayed-Khaiyum stresses the need to address transboundary threat

November 22, 2020 4:24 pm

Fiji has suffered economic and societal disruption despite our success in keeping COVID-19 away from our communities.

Minister for Economy Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum says that is the price we were forced to pay for keeping the virus out of the country.

The Minister adds while the disruption may be temporary, the pandemic has also allowed us to foresee the kinds of disruption that await us if climate change accelerates.

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“Whether we must respond to a cyclone, or to loss of livelihood due to changing climatic patterns, or to a pandemic, we will have to increase our collective efforts and develop effective strategies to target and correct the factors and conditions that make us vulnerable.”

Sayed-Khaiyum says that well before COVID-19 became a household term, an effort to develop legislation intended to improve coordination needed to minimize the impact of such threats on our people and the economy was underway.

He adds the pandemic has brought forward a set of new insidious threats that have further validated the importance of building national capacity to anticipate and manage risk.

The Minister says COVID-19, like climate change, is a transboundary threat and one that again signals the need to proactively shape the vision for the future we want.