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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

Friday 9 May 2014, Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) Suva, Fiji - Deep sea minerals have the potential to be a game changer for the Pacific. Whether they will bring a change for the good or the bad will be determined by the financial management of governments and their ability to adopt and enforce sensible environmental safeguards.

If revenue is managed transparently and prudently while protecting the environment, deep sea minerals could greatly improve the economies and livelihoods of the Pacific Islands countries.

To address these issues, the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) is holding a regional workshop, the fifth in its technical training series. This workshop will be held in Cook Islands on 13–16 May and will centre on the ‘Financial Aspects’ of the upcoming deep sea minerals industry.

The workshop will bring together more than 60 Pacific Island government minerals and finance officials and experts from around the globe for the first regional event of its kind on managing the potential wealth generated from the extraction of deep sea minerals. Although deep sea mining is yet to occur world-wide, there is much commercial interest in mineral formations, such as nodules, crusts and seafloor massive sulphides that have been discovered on the seabed, thousands of metres below sea-level, particularly in the Pacific Ocean.