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"At community level, there is little practical difference between disaster risk reduction and climate change
adaptation. Climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction both aim to reduce the vulnerability of
communities and contribute to sustainable development," he commented.
Charles Carlson, Director of Emergency Management in the Cook Islands, remarked that there has been a big
shift in the region towards reducing risks before a disaster actually happens.
"For the Cook Islands we are looking at developing a joint legislation for climate change and disaster risk
management.
I think it's a better approach because you're actually sharing resources rather than climate
change and disaster risk management doing their own thing. So, if we can bring these two together, we can
actually share resource and probably be more effective at the same time too," he said.
"SPC has been the backbone in developing disaster risk management within the region. It provides us with a
wide range of services from dealing with the governance and the legislaton through to all the practical things
needed to minimize disaster risks.
"When we looked at developing a disaster emergency trust fund after Cyclone Evan we didn't have a template
so we basically had to start from scratch, again with the support of SPC. It took us a whole year but the good
thing is we got our trust fund established, the first in the Pacific," he explained.
Greg Grimsich, from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), believes
more work is needed to ensure that capacity building efforts include both preparedness and emergency
response.
The work SPC has done over the past decades has had a tremendous impact in increasing capacity for
governments requiring external assistance from organisations like OCHA.
Mr Grimsich believes SPC's capacity development work to improve preparedness in Pacific Island Countries
would benefit from closer cooperation with partners like OCHA to assess how these training tools and services
are being used in emergency response situations.
"Increasingly it would be really encouraging to see that SPC capacity be used also in disaster response. I think
it would also complement the trainings are being done, how they are working, how they aren't working and
where they need to improve," he remarked.
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SECRENVIIIIT Or THE PRONG COMMUNITY