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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

The Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) are pleased to announce the 2014 meeting of the Pacific Platform for Disaster Risk Management which will be held from 2nd – 4th June 2014 at the Novotel Hotel in Suva, Fiji. The Pacific Platform for Disaster Risk Management is the annual opportunity for Pacific island countries and territories, development partners and donors, civil society, private sector as well as other stakeholders to share experiences and knowledge in building the resilience of their communities to disasters. In addition, the SPC will also convene the 20th Regional Disaster Managers Meeting also at the Novotel Hotel from 5th – 6th June 2014.

In 2011, the Pacific islands region agreed to develop a Strategy for Climate and Disaster Resilient Development in the Pacific (SRDP) by 2015 to succeed the Pacific Disaster Risk Reduction and Disaster Management Framework for Action 2005 – 2015 and Pacific Islands Framework for Action on Climate Change 2006 – 2015. The new strategy will provide a new approach on how to efficiently address DRM and Climate Change within the context of risk resilient development. The process of developing this new strategy has become known as the ‘Roadmap’.