Climate Change Resilience
The two day review meeting was held from 7th to 8th of August in Nauru at the Menen Hotel Conference Room, and attended by the project's 14 member countries and territories and its partner agencies.
Discussions highlighted the need for a shift in the approach by PACC from project demonstration to being seen as an important part of the larger climate change programmes of intervention at the country level. This means going beyond simply delivering key project outputs, to contributing to broader changes at the national level.
Countries will now measure how the project's mainstreaming efforts are contributing to effective coordination of climate change projects and funding at the national levels and the integration of climate change across key sector plans and programmes.
Such an approach will ensure that project interventions lead to long-lasting changes on the lives of people while they are trying to adapt to the impacts of climate change.
Regional Project Manager, Mr Taito Nakalevu, said that these are real results that PACC needs to further document for dissemination at the community, national, regional and global levels.
Member countries and territories have further refined their indicators to better capture the varied landscape of activities undertaken at pilot site level so results and impacts are better reported.
"This is an opportune time for the PACC to go down this road as adaptation priorities are now better defined as a result of the Vulnerability and Adaptation and Cost Benefit Analysis assessments," said Mr Nakalevu.
In addition, the PACC Project is putting gender differentiation at the centre of effective planning, implementation and monitoring as it recognises that vulnerability to climate change impacts is different for men, women and children.
"Gender disaggregation helps us to better understand the vulnerabilities that different groups face at the community level and this is important when prioritising adaptation options," said Mr Nakalevu.
Discussions also reflected on the need to consolidate lessons learnt from current pilot demonstrations for up-scaling and replication purposes. The injection of resources from the Australian Government and the use of remaining Global Environment Facility funds provide a significant opportunity for this to happen in the current phase of the project.
The MPR was attended by representatives from the Cooks Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tokelau, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
Also present were representatives from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Multi Country Office in Samoa, SPREP and representatives from the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID).
The PACC Project is helping member countries and territories build resilience and reduce vulnerability to the impacts of climate change in three key development sectors, that is, Coastal Zone Management, Water Resource Management and Food Production and Food Security.
It is implemented by UNDP in partnership with SPREP, and funded by the GEF and AusAID with support from the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) Climate Change Capacity Development (C3D+) Program.
- END -