Solomon Islands GS attends regional meeting on monitoring SDGs

Solomon Islands  Government Statistician Douglas Kimi is currently joining other professional statisticians and officials from countries across the pacific at a regional workshop on monitoring the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) related to Food and Agriculture (FAO) on world census of agriculture 2020 in Nadi, Fiji.
Organised by FAO through its subregional office for the Pacific Islands, the workshop aims to improve awareness about the 21 SDG indicators for which FAO is a custodian agency, and in developing a harmonized approach to collecting and using agricultural and rural statistics in the Pacific.
Also the roundtable focuses on new features and innovations included in the new World Programme for Census of Agriculture 2020 (WCA 2020) with the ambitions to disseminate among the selected member countries of FAO the new WCA 2020 which will cover the period 2016-2025.
The regional workshop is part of FAO statistics division capacity development activities to strengthen the knowledge and skills of national staff in member countries in charge of planning and conducting agricultural censuses.
This is the last in the series of regional roundtables on World Census of Agriculture 2020.
For FAO, assisting governments to produce accurate statistics for informed decision-making, and the agricultural census that is a key pillar in national statistical systems and an important data source for both users and producers of statistics, has become critical to the Organization’s work in support of its member countries.
One of the most important elements of FAO’s statistical work is the development and promotion of the decennial World Programme for the Census of Agriculture (WCA).


Since the founding of FAO in 1945, it has supported countries to carry out their national agricultural censuses using standard international concepts, definitions and methodologies.
Every ten years, FAO reviews the country experiences, revises and publishes a new set of census guidelines.
For Solomon Islands, the National Statistics Office within the Ministry of Finance & Treasury (MoFT) this year conducted its first ever National Agriculture Survey 2017 (NAS 2017) that concluded in October. The report of the survey (NAS 2017) will be launched in the second quarter of 2018.
The aims of the survey (NAS 2017) is to ensure enumerators collect data that will surely assist the government through the Ministry of Agriculture & Livestock with its planning to improve agriculture production in the Solomon Islands and also provide benchmark data on land use, type of agriculture and related activities, structure of agricultural holdings and their main characteristics, to support the strategic plans and programmes of the Solomon Islands on agriculture production and investment as well as to support development of some Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicators in the agriculture sector.
The participants of the FAO meeting are the professional statisticians and census leaders who are likely to play a role in the planning and execution of next agricultural census in their respective countries.
A total of 18 countries have been invited to the meeting, including Australia, Cook Islands, Fiji, France, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, New Zeeland, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, USA and Vanuatu.
The week-long workshop will conclude on Friday 10th November 2017.
Meanwhile, following this, Mr Kimi will again travel to New Caledonia to attend another regional conference which is the 5th Regional Conference of Heads of Planning and Statistics (HOPS) to be held at the South Pacific Secretariat (SPC) Headquarters, in Noumea, New Caledonia, from 14 to 16 November 2017.