Climate Change Resilience
The fifth multipartite review meeting for the Pacific Islands Greenhouse Gas Abatement through Renewable Energy Project (PIGGAREP) was held in Savaii, Samoa from 20-24 August 2012.
After the opening prayer delivered by Reverend Suieva Gogo, Dr. Netatua Pelesikoti, Director of the Climate Change Division at the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP), welcomed participants and partners, saying, "The development of renewable energy is key to achieving your national development goals, while at the same time demonstrating our commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions."
The PIGGAREP is now in its fifth year of implementation and, as it approaches the final years of its cycle, this meeting provided an opportunity to critically review the overall project status (technical, operational, and financial) and recommend further strategic barrier removal approaches to enhance overall project performance and implementation at the regional and national level.
"This meeting is clearly a tool which helps us monitor our progress over a period of time," said Ms. Nileema Noble, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Resident Representative, in her keynote address. "It is also an important process to take stock of what we've done well and perhaps identify areas in which we can do better."
This MPR is also an opportunity to review how the results of the project could be maximised, leverage partners, and seize opportunities to upscale and replicate project achievements while addressing important reporting gaps, such as the links to gender and impacts on peoples' lives (e.g. contribution to poverty reduction) and the need to be aware of negative environmental impacts.
The MPR also served as an opportunity to address issues of low delivery rate and late submission of quarterly progressive reports discussing how the countries and PMO could improve on these two essential processes in the next 12 months.
The meeting is the highest policy level meeting of the parties directly involved in implementation of the PIGGAREP, as well as a face-to-face meeting of the project board.
It was attended by 11 PIGGAREP Coordinators from Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu, as well as partners from the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), the University of the South Pacific (USP), the Pacific Power Association (PPA), the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS), and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
The programme included capacity building training sessions and associated meetings of partners in climate change mitigation, such as the Pacific Energy Oversight Group (PEOG), the Climate Change Mitigation Working Group (CCMWG), and the Pacific Appliance Labeling and Standards (PALS) Project Steering Committee and update information was presented on the status of SIDS DOCK PIGGAREP+ activities.
The PIGGAREP is a USD 5.25 million initiative to help 11 Pacific Island countries (PICs) remove barriers to utilising renewable energy technologies (RETs). The project is funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Multi Country Office in Samoa, and executed by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).
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