DATA from Solomon Islands National Statistics Office, Ministry of Finance and Treasury, Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock reported an estimated agricultural value of SBD$21.5 million was incurred due to the impacts of climatic change and natural disasters nationwide.
The substantial losses due to catastrophic events in the Solomon Islands agricultural sector has caused a lot of the financial constraints on the government fiscal policy, according to the National Agriculture Survey (NAS) 2017.
“And the estimated annual value of $21.524,422 million in agriculture output nationwide was lost as a result of climate change and disasters. This assumes normal market conditions of supply and demand.
“Most of these loses, amounting to $12, 487,321 were hydro-meteorological events and mainly impacted agricultural households in Guadalcanal and Malaita respectively.
“A further SI$7, 653,632 was lost due to other disasters, including biological events, again mainly in Guadalcanal.
“Climatological events reduced output by an estimated $954, 379, with most of those losses concentrated in Makira and Malaita Provinces,” the report stated.
There are new indicators that are extremely important in supporting our policies in mitigating the cost of the economy from natural disasters and climate change.
However, the impact of climate change and disaster on land area has a total of an estimated 617, 000 hectares of land and it was surveyed to be affected by disasters, of which 464, 602 hectares was reflected from hydro-meteorological events. Almost all of this land was located in Guadalcanal. A further 145,966 hectares were affected by other disasters.
