Fiji: Climate resilience
As a key component of their program, the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF) has joined forces for the Pacific with a long-term flagship program of the Global Island Partnership — the Island Resilience Challenge.
The foundational aspects were solution collection and sharing, scaling and investment pipeline creation, in a context of ridge to reef management.
This was announced by the PIDF secretary-general Francois Martel at an official side event hosted by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and the Ministry of External Affairs of India on Building a Resilient Future for Island Nations held at the India Pavilion at the ongoing COP23.
Mr Martel, who was invited to be part of this high-level panel, informed the audience that "from a green—blue economy perspective, when we speak of resilience, we do not simply imply resilience to climate change although this is an important factor, particularly in the Pacific.
"When we speak of resilience, we speak of island or community resilience because a community, when resilient, can better absorb or deal with a disaster or crisis of any sort, whether climate induced or not, whether natural or man-made."
Living in the tropical islands of the Pacific, facing a natural disaster is not a question of "if" but rather one of "when" especially with the effects of climate change and particularly the warming of our oceans which are making Category 5 cyclones the new norm in our region.
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