Resilience to disasters and emergency management is top of the agenda at the five-day Pacific Regional Resilience Meeting currently underway in Suva.
EU Pacific Ambassador Andrew Jacobs says this is an opportunity to examine how to implement the framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.
“The European Union is working very closely with the Pacific to try to ensure a very very strong agreement in Paris that will really mean legally binding emissions targets that will really have a positive effect in reducing the negative effects of climate change.”
Jacobs says the outcome of the five-day meeting will be considered at the COP 21 meeting on climate change in Paris next month.
The SPC Geoscience Director, Professor Michael Petterson, says the meeting is to help individual communities be proactive in preparing for disasters before they happen.
Petterson says some of the challenges they face is to find the communities which are examples of some of the key issues, whether it’s coastal erosion, drought, flooding, earthquakes and tsunami.
He adds the Pacific is seen as vulnerable to natural disasters, perhaps more now than ever before because of the effects of climate change.
The meeting which started yesterday ends on Friday.
