What Kind of Aid Does the Pacific (Part 5) - Health Care

Friends, the statistics are not good. In fact, they are very troubling. The state of health in the Pacific is poor. There are a myriad of reasons, but the primary two are lack of investment in health care services by government, and personal choices.

Before we talk about health care in terms of aid, let’s first address the issue of personal choice. For most countries, there is sufficient locally grown and produced healthy food to provide for adequate balanced diets. At times, cyclones and flooding and drought interrupt the food production process, and climate change is interfering with those processes, particularly in atoll countries, but for the most part, we’re still in a situation where we can grow our own food - enough to feed our families and sell the remainder at the market in order to have cash income to buy other necessities.

What Kind of Aid Does the Pacific Need (Part 4) – Infrastructure

It’s hard to get ahead in life if you can’t access information and you can’t physically get where you want to go.

Which is why infrastructure, whether it’s communications infrastructure for internet access, or transport infrastructure that is reliable and well maintained, like ports, airport and roads, is so critical. This is particularly so in a region that has so many geographic challenges to overcome. The problem is that the return on investment is not instant like we see in geographically centred countries like in Europe or parts of Asia. Infrastructure investments are super expensive in the Pacific, and require significantly more maintenance due to climatic conditions.

What Kind of Aid Does the Pacific Need (Part 3) - Jobs

Jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs. Broken record, yes? It’s what’s needed in the Pacific as lifestyles change, as communities develop. It’s doubtful policy makers thought too far ahead in terms of what would happen as economies transitioned due to trade. What would people do?

This is of particular concern for youth in the Pacific, specifically educated youth. Here is a whole subset of the labour force that is unemployed or underemployed - unproductive if you think in terms of its productivity potential. We need jobs for youth, and they need to be productive, allow for social protection AND promote the idea of sustainability. Ideally, they would also focus on transferable skills that can move across sectors and borders.

What Kind of Aid Does the Pacific Need (Part 2) - Responsive Government

Earlier this year, the ‘My World 2015’ data results were published - providing excellent insight into the priorities of everyday people on issues from healthcare to jobs to internet access. What was really nice to see was a breakdown of results by country, region, gender, age and even education level. You can view the results here.

The desire for ‘responsive government’ landed fourth on the list in the Pacific (second for men, fifth for women). It is an extremely important issue, particularly with respect to development and building resilience. Communities can and should take the lead because they know what is best for them, but government, particularly local government, still has a critical role to play. It develops policies, delivers essential services, and creates incentives to invest in and grow local economies. One of the challenges to local governments, however, is that they often have ‘unfunded mandates’ - responsibilities without the necessary financing to ensure they can do their job adequately.

What Kind of Aid Does the Pacific Need? (Part 1)

This learning platform has placed its primary focus on the need to improve knowledge to increase resilience to climate change and manage risks at the community level in the Pacific. One may equate that with learning solely about the impacts of climate change, but that would be a mistake. Being resilient, as we have noted on many occasions, is about improving resilience in all sectors, be it economy, education or communications.

However, the global aid discussion figures around the impacts of climate change. What with El Niño and the hottest six months ever recorded, it is no wonder. In vulnerable countries like the Pacific islands, development discussions - with donors, development partners and within government itself - have been targeting climate change adaptation. And we get that, because time is of the essence.

But many countries in the Pacific are still classified as least developed countries (LDCs) and need a lot of development finance to ensure that issues like education, healthcare and a sustainable economy are meeting the needs of the population - with or without climate change in mind.

What it Means to be Resilient (Part 4) - Managing Natural Assets and Economic Opportunities

We’ve reached the end of our series on what it means to be resilient. In this final installment, we look at the aspects of economic opportunity and management of natural assets. When the aspects of community resilience were identified by the IFRC based on community perceptions of resilience, it was through a global aggregate of feedback. This makes this more difficult for Pacific communities because the idea of natural assets assumes a range of assets both on land and in the sea. In low lying atolls, natural assets refer almost exclusively to what is in the sea (and, of course, the sea itself). So, how can we use these criteria to understand how the SDGs can help improve community resilience in relation to limited natural resources available.

What it Means to be Resilient (Part 3) - Infrastructure and Services

Resilience. The go-to word these days to make you feel smart. Of course, you have to know what it means, and it means many things in many different contexts. We’ve been working our way through what it means for a community to be resilient, and in part three of our series, we look at infrastructure and services.

Why is infrastructure so important? It underpins service delivery. And so, the more resilient your community’s infrastructure, the more resilient your services are. For example: are roads in danger of being washed out during times of flooding? Are electrical sources protected during storms - and can electricity be generated in times of emergency? What is the backup electricity source? Are schools and other public buildings built back from the shoreline and rivers? Have gas stations been raised so that they can still be accessed during flooding? Are health centres reinforced so that they can be operational in times of crisis? Is there proper storage for potable water? What about communications? Will the community be cut off during times of crisis? And transport? Are there plans and is there capacity to stick to them?

What Does it Mean to be Resilient (Part 2) - Community Organization and Connectivity

In the first part of our series on what it means to be resilient, we focussed on the health and knowledge of the community. In part 2, we’ll look at how a community is organized and how well it is connected to surrounding communities, within the region and globally. As before, we use the SDGs to provide a frame of reference for the type of actions that can be undertaken at the community level to improve resilience and adaptation to the ever changing world.

What does it mean for a community to be ‘organized’? In this framework we take organized to mean governance and rule of law. SDG Goal 11 focuses on sustainable cities (and communities). Why? Because 95% of urban expansion in the next decades will take place in developing countries, and the Pacific is no exception. Urban areas account for 60-80% of energy consumption, while rapid urbanization puts undue pressure on freshwater supplies, on public health and the general living environment. In order to be resilient in the face of vulnerabilities and shocks such as cyclones, drought or epidemics, communities need to ensure access to safe housing.

What Does it Mean to be Resilient (Part 1) - Knowledge and Health

What does it mean to be resilient? Our parent publication, Theory in Practice, published an article recently which looked at definitions of resilience. Most were from the point of view of donors and development organizations, but the IFRC had a definition that had built upon the views and perceptions of communities worldwide. It was a breath of fresh air and we thought it would be a great place to begin to help us break down just what resilience means for communities, and what communities and local governments can do to increase their resilience to any number of shocks: climate change, disaster, health epidemics and food insecurity, to name but a few.

An MDG Recap: What Can We Learn from Where We Stumbled?

This site aims to be a resource on risk management and community resilience issues in the framework of the SDGs. But in order to understand just what needs to happen to effectively manage risk and increase resilience in the Pacific, it is important to learn from our track record on the MDGs. There were some positives, there were plenty of disappointing outcomes, and more than enough analysis of MDG results in the Pacific from which to learn in order to take steps forward in the face of climate change and increasing insecurities on a large number of issues.

Where to begin? There were 8 MDGs (compared to the 17 SDGs) and we could go through the results for each one individually. However, that has already been done (and done well, in a report by Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat. Read the full report here). Instead, we look to themes emerging from the report to help us understand why there has been failure to increase community resilience in the Pacific, and to better understand the risks that need to be ‘managed’ in order for sustainable development to actually happen.

The GCF: Catalyst for Adaptation or Business as Usual?

Everyone has questions about the Green Climate Fund. For some, it has been presented as the financial cure-all for developing countries and those most vulnerable to climate change. For others, it is just one more bureaucratic trust fund that will put international and donor interests first and developing country interests a distant second. What is interesting about the GCF is that it has received far more attention than any other development trust fund ever has, and is quite polarizing. Politics as usual, but for Pacific island governments and citizens, it is important to have a good understanding of what to expect from the Fund.

What differentiates the GCF from other climate change trust funds such as the Global Environment Facility is that it specifically reserves 50% of its funding for least developed countries (LDCs), small island states (SIDS) and Africa. It also ensures equal funding for adaptation and mitigation. The GCF was launched in 2015 to much fanfare and great expectations that the most vulnerable would be prioritized.

Capacity Building for Climate Change Adaptation

Understanding the Paris Agreement in the Pacific, Part 4

Our fourth and final installment of the Paris Agreement ‘explained’ in the Pacific context examines the focus on capacity building. Given that the agreement puts emphasis on local government and civil society in Paris Agreement implementation, it is unsurprising that capacity building gets its own mention. While capacity building is referenced throughout the document, it has specific mention in Article 11: “Capacity building should be country-driven, based on and responsive to national needs and foster country ownership, including at national, subnational and local levels.”

This is important because the sustainability of climate change mitigation and adaptation initiatives needs to be based on local knowledge, particularly in countries like the Pacific where geography limits the quantity and type of interventions which can be undertaken, and the frequency with which outside expertise can be reasonably accessed. Which turns our attention to ‘capacity building for what’ exactly?

What is Damage and Loss in Terms of Climate Change?

Understanding the Paris Agreement in the Pacific, Part 3 

What is ‘damage and loss’? It was a quite contentious component of the negotiations during COP21 in Paris, largely because it apportions blame for the impacts of climate change on the biggest polluters - those which are essentially causing sea level rise and changes to the climate that see more intensive and frequent storms and droughts that impact the poorest nations the hardest. For example, it is no secret that the current El Nino, which is causing massive drought across the Pacific, south East Asia and much of Africa, is the strongest on record in large part due to climate change. Significant and perhaps irreparable damage to crops and agricultural land is taking place - losses which will impact the livelihoods and economies of those affected to the point that some communities may need to migrate for seasonal work or entirely and find new places to live, meaning they lose not only their livelihoods but also their homes and land - things they are unlikely to be compensated for.  

It makes sense in theory that climate victims should be compensated - this is particularly relevant in the Pacific Islands where entire communities and even countries are at risk of survival and continued existence. Climate change is having drastic impacts through no fault of Pacific Islanders - who contributed a stunning 0.02% of Greenhouse Gas emissions up to 2010 - and many risk losing everything and should definitely compensated for it.  

Adaptation Planning: The Role of Government and Communities

Understanding the Paris Agreement in the Pacific, Part 2

In part 1 of this series, we discussed the importance of the recognition of the role of local government in the fight against climate change in the Paris Agreement. Not only was this recognition groundbreaking, it is absolutely critical for the effective implementation of climate adaptation activities. While national policies and strategies on adaptation provide a framework for action and allocate financing, the majority of activities take place at the local level on a case by case basis.

What is important about the Paris Agreement is that it is explicit about what needs to take place in order for adaptation to actually work. It notes that adaptation should be ‘country-driven, gender responsive, participatory and fully transparent,’ while ensuring the needs of ‘vulnerable groups, communities and ecosystems’ based on science and local knowledge. This last bit is integral - scientific responses are important but the Agreement recognizes that communities have local wisdom and practices that have served them well in the past and grounding current a future adaptation on this knowledge will increase the resilience of communities because the processes will be something that they inherently understand and accept, versus foreign scientific methods which don’t always mesh with local culture and capacities to sustain such processes.

Recognizing the Role of Local Government in the Paris Agreement

Understanding the Paris Agreement in the Pacific, Part 1

The Paris Agreement, resulting from the COP21 in Paris in December 2015, was a landmark agreement that, while far from perfect, goes a long way towards recognizing the needs and priorities of vulnerable countries such as small island states and least developed countries in relation to climate change. While recognizing that limiting global temperature increase to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels won't be enough to protect SIDS and LDCs, and aiming to limit temperature increase to 1.5 degrees was the highlight of the document and a win for Pacific island countries, among others, there was also another key aspect of the Agreement which will make response to climate change all the more effective in the long term. Specifically, the Agreement recognizes the role of subnational and local governments in mitigation, and in particular, adaptation actions. This is the first climate change agreement to do so, and it means a lot.

Why? To date, response to climate change has centred on the national and international levels - global agreements with national policies and action plans to implement commitments made by Parties to those agreements. However, the actual process - the day to day actions of mitigation and specifically adaptation - take place at the subnational and local levels. And so the recognition not only of the role of subnational and local government, but also their needs in terms of finance and capacity building, is crucial.

SDG Learning Resources

Here you will find links to lessons and ideas related to risk management and community resilience in the Pacific and from around the world. They are organized by topic according to the SDGs. This page will be updated regularly.