Addressing a national seminar on ‘Innovative Resource: Empowering Rural Livelihood’ organised by Synod College here, Corpuz said food security has become a “big issue” due to extremities of climate like droughts and floods.

Because of climate change, drought has affected agriculture and floods have become increasingly unmanageable, she said.

The UN envoy said it was time to cultivate crops which could stand drought conditions or climate change.

Stressing that developing nations need not all the time emulate what the West was doing, Corpuz said they could always “carry on with their indigenous knowledge” in the preservation of ecology.

“Developed nations can assist the developing countries with transfer of technology,” she said.

She put forward the example of how indigenous people have been cultivating food crops on hill slopes and irrigation was being done through local means.