NEWS

"We visited 10 schools and eight communities during March and April, to raise awareness of climate change," explains project coordinator Iliapi Tuwai. 

"This is the first step to mainstreaming – when people understand the risks, they realise that it is important to consider them in community planning for the future."
 

Working with the Fiji Ministry of Agriculture, the PACC team reached more than 3,300 students and 150 teachers in the school visits and 168 community members through the community meetings. Posters, videos and the iTaukei glossary, which explains climate change terms in the Fijian language, were used to aid the discussions.
 

"People are already seeing the impacts of climate change in their lives for example, increased rainfall and flooding, and the problems this is causing with activities such as farming. We are helping them to understand the causes and ways to manage and adapt to the changes."
 

The PACC project has two pilot sites in Viti Levu, where it is working with communities to demonstrate best practice adaptation measures for agriculture in low-lying flood-vulnerable areas. Awareness-raising in the same districts complements the practical demonstrations, with mainstreaming as the overall goal.
 

"They are really starting to understand the issues now," says Iliapi. "All of the communities we visited are now working to incorporate climate change into their community development plans."
 

At the schools, students were particularly interested in practical ways to manage climate change, and several schools are now developing agriculture projects with the help of the PACC team. The teachers also requested that the PACC team return to deliver the session on a regular basis.
 

The PACC project is working in 14 Pacific island countries to help mainstream climate change at all levels, from community through to the highest policy levels, as well as demonstrating practical adaptation measures. The project is funded by the Global Environment Facility and the Australian Government with support from the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) Climate Change Capacity Development (C3D+). The Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) is the implementing partner, and the United Nations Development Programme acts as implementing agency.