Adaptation and Disaster Risk Management in the Pacific

A paper that addresses Small Island developing states (SIDS) ongoing projects and projects in the pipeline targeted at implementing adaptation measures. In the Pacific alone there have been a range of such initiatives starting with the Pacific Islands Climate Change Assistance Programme (PICCAP) project in the late 90s to the ongoing Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change (PACC) project, the latter building on the lessons learnt from its predecessors to help increase resilience to the impacts of climate change. On a global, regional and national level these projects have stringently involved strengthening of institutions, policy and regulations, but more importantly evolved to implement on the ground-level tasks, many of which follow on from, or are acting in synergy with other projects for the mainstreaming of climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) initiatives in communities. A key challenge in this context for decision makers, policy makers, and development partners is to understand and adopt strategies that are effective in mobilizing people and resources in response to CCA and DRR. All efforts in this context must be made to learn from past lessons and concerted action taken to refine, augment and deploy these initiatives appropriately and urgently.