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Project: ACP-EU Disaster Risk Reduction in Eight Pacific ACP States

Sunday, 27 June 2010 16:25 administrator
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Disaster Risk Reduction in Eight Pacific ACP States (2007-2013)

The Disaster Risk Reduction in Eight Pacific ACP States project was a Multi-Country project funded by the European Union under the 9th EDF with a budget totalling €9.26 million. The participating countries included the Federated States of Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Tuvalu. The project commenced on 1st October 2007 and was completed in 2013.

The overall objective of the project was poverty alleviation and sustainable development through disaster risk reduction.

The project's purpose was to build resilience in selected communities to reduce the risk to Pacific Island communities to disasters targeting two specific areas:

  • Access to Safe Drinking Water – The Regional Action Plan on Sustainable Water Management identifies the vulnerability of water resources and water supply systems to climatic hazards and proposes approaches to mitigate against these risks. Low lying islands are vulnerable to climatic variability due to lack of natural ground water storage. In islands that have sufficient supply maintaining the quality of drinking water is important for rural communities. Measures for water sustainability, land use, sanitation, wastewater and solid waste disposal are important factors in determining appropriate solutions.
  • Emergency Communications and Emergency Operation Centres – The Regional Framework for Action 2005 – 2015 Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters, calls for planning for effective preparedness, response and recovery with key actions to establish functional emergency communications systems and emergency operations centres (EOC). The Framework calls for establishment of an effective, integrated and people-focused early warning system. In many of the participating countries early warning systems lack basic equipment, skills and resources. The weakest element is in the dissemination of warnings and the preparedness of the communities to respond.

This project is now complete.



Last Updated on Thursday, 05 February 2015 07:03  


Newsflash

Tuesday, 24 June 2014, Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), Suva - A broad range of geospatial data experts, managers and stakeholders from the Council of Regional Organisations in the Pacific (CROP), as well as partner agencies convened for the 2nd CROP Spatial Data Infrastructure meeting. The session was held at the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) in Suva on June 17th to 18th 2014.

The meeting was opened by Prof Michael Petterson, Director of SPC’s Applied Geoscience and Technology Division (AGTD), where he highlighted the various challenges facing effective geospatial data management in the Pacific. Such challenges cited were under-skilled staff, limited understanding by responsible personnel of available datasets, and obsolete formats of residing data. He encouraged the meeting to bring about some positive outcomes to address these and the many other challenges.