Addressing the opening of the High Level Segment of the 17th Session of the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) at the United Nations General Assembly Hall, New York City, Tufton told an audience of heads of state and the diplomatic corps that, given the scale and magnitude of the challenges confronting member states of the Alliance of Small Island States, "this session of the CSD must give priority attention to the special and important needs and concerns of our countries".
Climate change issues
Speaking on behalf of the 37 member states from the Caribbean, Pacific and Oceana regions, Tufton warned that against the existential issue of climate change, the role of the international community in the provision of financing, technology and capacity building is not only necessary but vital, and that further delay risks endangering our very existence.
"While we have contributed the least to this single most urgent threat, we have no choice but to bear the heavy brunt of its impact. It not only poses barriers to our sustainable development goals, but further threatens our economic and physical survival," Tufton said.
Noting that there was no time like the present, Tufton informed that it is, therefore, critical that the outcome of the meeting include bold and far-reaching policy options to address the special needs and concerns of Small Island Developing States in achieving their sustainable development goals in agriculture, rural development, land, desertification and drought.
Against the background of the ministry's production and productivity improvement programme, while there, Tufton hosted a Diaspora Investment Seminar at the Jamaican Consulate, in New York, under the theme 'Agriculture is back'.
Presentations were made by the team on pig and sheep rearing, honey, scallion, pepper, forestry and salt-water shrimp production.
More than 100 potential investors, as well as persons already involved in exporting primary crops such as pumpkin, cassava, dasheen and yam from Jamaica to the United States, attended the session. Some 30 investment opportunities were identified and these are currently being processed by the unit.