Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Australia has has granted additional aid worth $AUD3 million to improve land use and establish early warning systems in communities hit by Haiyan, reports ABC.

All key stakeholders and national agencies in the fields of weather, climate services, climate change and disaster risk management have been meeting in Suva to have their final input to the latest draft. The strategy aims to strengthen climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction...

Non-government organisations across the Pacific have been recognised for reducing the impact disasters have in the region. 'The whole reason we came up with this award in the first place was that we really wanted to encourage and celebrate all the work that is being done in the Pacific,' said Tim Wilcox...

Drought policy specialist Linda Botterill adheres to the view that the worst time to try and develop a clear-eyed drought policy is during a drought arguing that there is a case to be made for taxpayer-funded drought assistance, 'but it needs to be well thought through in advance, and not developed in the heat of an argument of a drought'...

Research Fellow with Victoria University Professor Roger Jones works on developing ways to manage climate change risks. Talking about the long term effects of global warming on the infrastructure, particularly on the electric grid, he said: 'We've built the grid to withstand the hottest temperatures. It needs the capacity to handle those peak loads rather than just the average loads'...

The world needs to re-think disaster risk management in the light of new trends in national disasters. In the recent large catastrophes less people died but the economic losses are going through the roof, according to Jerry Velasquez from the UN's Office for Disaster Risk Reduction...

'It's about getting researchers to work with farmers and looking at how you make your system as resilient as possible when you get these conditions and how do you get better estimates of what rainfall is going to be in the future,'said Professor Snow Barlow of the Primary Industries Adaptation Research Network...

Due to climate change induced sea level rise and salination, Kiribati has to prepare for the eventuality that rising sea levels may render it uninhabitable by the 2050s, said President Anote Tong. The Pacific nation is holding a national public hearing on climate change in a bid to provide the country's residents with information on the issue of climate change and their responsibilities...