1. The Foreign Ministry will host “the seventh Experts Forum on the Korea-Caribbean Partnership” in Seoul on November 8 under the theme of “Enhancing the Korea-Caribbean Partnership on Climate Change and Food Security.”

° The event will bring together ten experts from eight Caribbean countries, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the Association of Caribbean States (ACS); from such international organizations as the Global Green Growth Institute; and from the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), the Rural Development Administration and other agencies at home. The experts will muster wisdom to resolve issues concerning climate change and food security in the Caribbean region.

° In particular, at the first “ROK-CARICOM high-level meeting” held in Jamaica in February, the two sides agreed to work more closely together on climate change and food security in a bid to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in the Caribbean region. The forthcoming Forum has been organized to seek ways to implement the measures agreed upon at the meeting.

※ The ROK-Caribbean Forum is a consultative mechanism convened on an annual basis since 2011, to which officials of countries and regional organizations in the Caribbean are invited for discussions on the ROK-Caribbean cooperation.

- The themes of the previous rounds of the Forum were international cooperation and green growth in 2011; the e-government system and marine environment in 2012; tourism in 2013; the ROK-Caribbean shared prosperity in 2014; new and renewable energy in 2015; and climate change and food security in 2016.

2. Climate change and food security are the biggest challenges facing the Caribbean countries as well as global issues included in the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs). The ROK has worked increasingly closely with the Caribbean region, including by rendering assistance to the region, through the ACS and other regional consultative mechanisms, with its efforts to respond to climate change as well as by running the “Korea-Latin America Food & Agriculture Cooperation Initiative (KoLFACI).”

※ KoLFACI, currently run together with its 13 member states and three international organizations after being launched in 2014, seeks to resolve such issues of Latin America as low productivity, food self-sufficiency and poverty of small-scale farmers through an agricultural technology cooperation network with Latin American and Caribbean countries.

3. At the Forum, the experts from the ROK and the Caribbean will share with one another creative ideas for and experiences in addressing the climate change and food security issues in the latter region and will draw up various ways for mutually beneficial cooperation in that regard, thereby helping further boost future-oriented partnership between the two regions.

※ Those interested in attending the open Forum to be hosted by the Foreign Ministry should file prior registration at the official website of the event at www.kor-carib2017.com.


* unofficial translation