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Vanuatu reviews disaster response following cyclone Pam

Monday, 29 June 2015 13:27 administrator
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One hundred days since tropical cyclone Pam swept through the Pacific, the Government of Vanuatu is reviewing its disaster response arrangements.

A Lessons Learnt Workshop, hosted by the National Disaster Management Office, will take place in Port Vila on 24 to 25 June to inform the development and implementation of improved procedures for disaster management in Vanuatu.

The workshop is funded by the European Union as part of the Building Safety and Resilience in the Pacific Project, an initiative implemented by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC).

It will examine the coordination, early warning, information management, logistics and assessments that took place in the immediate aftermath of tropical cyclone Pam – all essential discussion topics following a disaster event of this magnitude.

In addition, the organisers are keen to understand how the response operations addressed issues relating to the different needs of different groups, protection and displacement.

These topics are particularly important as they relate to how the national arrangements met the needs of approximately 65,000 people who were displaced by the cyclone.

The Lessons Learnt Workshop will involve representatives of the Government of Vanuatu, SPC, civil society organisations, faith-based groups, non-governmental organisations, the European Union, United Nations agencies, regional organisations and the private sector.

The National Disaster Management Office hopes the workshop will provide partners with the opportunity to discuss the challenges faced during the response to tropical cyclone Pam, highlight areas of strength that can be built upon and help to develop practical solutions to include in work plans to support effective future disaster response.

The involvement of SPC is an opportunity to obtain feedback on its technical support role in the areas of food security, health surveillance, post disaster impact assessments and coordination support.

The objective of the ACP-EU ‘Building Safety and Resilience in the Pacific’ project is to reduce the vulnerability, as well as the social, economic and environmental costs of disasters caused by natural hazards, thereby achieving regional and national sustainable development and poverty reduction goals in 15 Pacific countries of the Africa Caribbean Pacific (ACP) group of states.
Caption: Restoring public health surveillance systems after cyclone Pam, as shown here in a health clinic in Tanna in April, is among the topics to be covered at the lessons learned workshop this week.
Photo: Paul White/SPC
Last Updated on Monday, 29 June 2015 14:19  

Newsflash

Monday 16 September 2013, Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), Suva, Fiji: Fifty-nine staff members of the Secretariat of the Pacific (SPC) staff have completed disaster risk management (DRM) and climate change training in recent months.

Half-day training sessions were held in Suva (Fiji), Honiara (Solomon Islands), Pohnpei (Federated States of Micronesia) and Noumea (New Caledonia), designed to build staff capacity in areas related to climate change and disaster risk management. It is part of a programme of action to mainstream these issues across all of the divisions of SPC.

Because of their impact on social, economic, market and industry sectors, DRM and climate change are considered ‘cross-cutting’ issues, and SPC is integrating such issues into its programmatic approach to development.  This process is referred to as mainstreaming.

SPC is the Pacific region’s principal technical and scientific organisation. Its divisions are involved in research and project implementation in the areas of applied geoscience and technology; public health; fisheries, aquaculture and marine environment; economic development (transport and energy); statistics for development; land resources (agriculture, forestry, land use, animal health, etc.); and education, training and human development.

The training for SPC staff is designed to enable them to better understand DRM and climate change and to factor this professional awareness into personal roles and functions. The training is also designed to enable SPC staff to further contribute to the organisational goal of serving Pacific Island countries and territories (PICTs) by assisting them to mainstream DRM and climate change into national and regional planning processes.