SPC Geoscience Division

Home GSD Programmes

SPC GEOSCIENCE PROGRAMMES

The Geoscience Division’s work focuses on providing assistance to Members in three technical programme areas: Geoscience for Development (formerly Ocean and Islands), Water and Sanitation and Disaster Reduction.

  • Geoscience for Development provides applied ocean, island and coastal geoscience services to support countries to govern and develop their natural resources, increase their resilience to hazards and facilitates data-based approaches to adaption. These vital technical services will be strategically deployed in response to specific Member requests to assist in the development, management and monitoring of natural resources and unique island environmental systems and processes.
  • Water and Sanitation Programme provides technical support to Members through capacity building, awareness and advocacy related to the management of water resources and the provision of water supply and sanitation services.
  • Disaster Reduction Programme provides Members with technical and policy advice and support to strengthen disaster risk management practices. The programme carries out this responsibility in coordination and collaboration with other technical programme areas within the Division and also with a range of regional and international development partners and donors.

Technical Support Services that cross cut the work of the three technical work programmes of the Geoscience Division are: natural resource economics; GIS and remote sensing; technical equipment and services; data management; and publications and library.

Corporate Services Support to the technical work programmes and technical support services of the Division are through ensuring effective policies and practices are in place for the orderly and efficient delivery of work. Corporate Services Support consists of finance, administration and IT support facilities, all of which would progressively integrate within the SPC beginning 1 January 2011.


 

Newsflash

Wednesday 10 July 2013, Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), Suva, Fiji – With the increasing flow of funding into the Pacific region for disaster risk management and climate change adaptation projects, it is essential to combine the perspectives of different sciences for effective outcomes. This is a key message from the Joint Meeting of the Pacific Platform for Disaster Risk Management and the Pacific Climate Change Roundtable currently underway in Nadi, Fiji.

‘There are a lot of people with good intentions who want to do something useful about climate change adaptation,’ says Dr Arthur Webb of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC).  ‘But for successful adaptation, we have to combine the sciences.’

‘You can have a technically sound climate change adaptation project, but if you don’t engage the social sciences in explaining activities to the community then the project will be less effective or could even fail,’ says Dr Webb, who manages SPC’s Oceans and Islands Programme.

‘If you have one group of scientists working to inform a community about something and they leave out another group of scientists with different and relevant expertise, then you don’t get the full picture.’

‘On the other hand, there are good examples of community disaster risk and climate change adaptation projects where the application of technical scientific principles is being combined with social science perspectives to ensure that critical aspects, such as communication and livelihoods, are taken into consideration,’ he says.