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Snapshots 72 - DISASTER REDUCTION PROGRAMME - October 2011

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From the Managers Desk

We have just completed the first annual meeting of the SOPAC Division of the SPC. Now no longer a separate regional intergovernmental organisation the former membership of the SOPAC Council as it was known up to 2010 was 'reconstituted' as the SOPAC Division Meeting.

The meeting included the reporting of work programme delivery by each of the threee SOPAC technical programme areas.

Importantly, the meeting endorsed a process for the development of an integrated regional strategy for Disaster Risk Management and Climate Change Adaptation & Mitigation by 2015.

Such a strategy would succeed the existing Pacific Disaster Risk Reduction and Disaster Management Framework for Action 2005 - 2015 and the Pacific Islands Framework for Action on Climate Change 2006 - 2015.
Ahead of us now is the challenge to implement the process that has been endorsed and we look to the guidance of all Pacific island countries and territories and the support of our partners like SPREP, UNISDR and others to realise the new policy instrument.

We have a number of interesting articles on our DRM activities in this edition and hope you enjoy them.

Download Full Edition | Read Online

Mosese Sikivou
Deputy Director
Disaster Reduction

Last Updated on Tuesday, 22 November 2011 09:23  

Newsflash

The second country engagement to establish a DRM Mainstreaming for PNG took place on the 3rd-14th May 2010 with representatives from SOPAC, UNDP Pacific Centre and UNDP PNG. This was a follow up mission to the first country engagement in February this year. The intention of the first mission was to scope out a process for the development and implementation of a DRM National Action Plan.

However, in the initial stages of the mission, stakeholders dispelled the prospects for the development of a comprehensive national approach to mainstreaming as would normally be undertaken through the mainstreaming exercise. The geography and population of PNG make the concept of DRM mainstreaming difficult. The need to strengthen DRM in PNG is heightened by the fact that nearly 25% of the natural disasters occurring in the Pacific between 1950-2008 were in PNG (EM-DAT1).