Climate Change Matters

Abstract

Although hydro-meteorological hazards such as floods, droughts and tropical cyclones afflict many regions of the world, their impact in terms of lives lost and livelihoods disrupted tends to be felt heavily in small, fragile and developing countries such as the Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs). Climate change threatens to heighten these impacts in many areas, by changing the frequency and intensity of extreme events, and bringing changes in mean conditions that may alter the underlying vulnerability of communities to hazards. The result in the decades to come may be an increase in the global and national burden of weather-related disasters: events that can threaten the sustainability of development processes and progress. Integrated management of disaster risk requires action to reduce impacts of extreme events before, during and after they occur, including technical preventive measures and aspects of socio-economic development designed to reduce human vulnerability to hazards. Approaches toward the management of climate change impacts also have to consider the reduction of human vulnerability under changing levels of risk. A key challenge and opportunity therefore lies in building a bridge between current disaster risk management efforts aimed at reducing vulnerabilities to extreme events and efforts to promote climate change adaptation. There has been some advancement in the Pacific where the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (Project and the Regional Disaster Facility have supported their members both at the national and community levels to mainstream climate change and disaster risk management in national and community strategic planning and through project level implementations. Tonga, Tuvalu, Niue, Cook Islands and Marshall Islands have completed and approved their Joint National Action Plan for Climate Change and Disaster Risk Management (JNAP) and several countries are underway including Nauru, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji and Federated States of Micronesia. At the regional level, SPREP, SPC and the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) are facilitating the development of a single regional integrated framework for climate change and disaster risk management to replace the two separate frameworks, the Pacific Framework for Action on Climate Change (PIFACC) and the Regional Framework for Action on Disaster Risk Management both ending in 2015.SPC) through the Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change (PACC).