Climate Change Resilience

8 August 2011, Port Vila, Vanuatu - A week long review meeting for the Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change (PACC) is officially underway at the Le Lagon Conference Room in Port Vila, Vanuatu.

PACC is a 13 million dollar paccreview_groupproject that supports adaptation to climate change projects in three main areas – food security and production, coastal management and water resources management. The Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) is an implementing partner with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). It is funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF).

The second Multipartite Review Meeting brought in over 50 participants that include regional partners, stakeholders and the 13 member countries in the Pacific to review the PACC progress, discuss policy, technical and operational issues and recommendations for the decision of the MPR participants.

In his opening address, the Acting Director of SPREP, Mr. Kosi Latu, briefly highlighted the efforts of the PACC project at national and regional level since its inception in 2009.

"A number of lessons were learned during the year in particular the "one-to-one" mentoring approach of working with countries has enabled the PACC team at SPREP to take the national coordinators and their core teams through the "how to" develop their work plans," said Mr Latu.

"The PACC unit at SPREP has also had the opportunity to better understand the difficulties that coordinators have in particular with financial processes at the national level and to find ways with the coordinators to address these issues."

The UNDP Resident Representative Samoa, Ms Nileema Noble said, "This meeting is happening at a very important juncture and considerable investment has been made in the PACC Project."

"The PACC Project is to now go beyond and catalyse changes in the lives in the Pacific, we'd like to see member countries reflect in their reports how PACC is actually building resilience in the region, and capturing the impact it is having on the Pacific people."

Speaking on behalf of the host country, the Vanuatu Ministry of Infrastructure and Public Utilities, Director General Mr Morris Kaloran said the PACC is a massive initiative that comes with a diversity of administrative challenges, both at the regional and national levels.

"The PACC project provides us with such an opportunity with its two pronged approach that entails interventions on the ground and at the policy level to build solid resilience across the Pacific."

Countries that are part of the PACC include Nauru, Niue, Marshall Islands, Tonga and Tuvalu who are focusing on addressing water resources management; Fiji, Palau, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands have national projects to help increase food security and food production with; Cook Islands, Vanuatu, Samoa and the Federated States of Micronesia addressing coastal erosion management.

The week-long meeting is set from the 8th to the 12th August, 2011.