Climate change remains the biggest threat to the lives and livelihoods of Pacific Islanders. Changing weather patterns, seasonal temperatures, and severity and occurrences of natural disasters have devastating impacts.
They hinder access to nutritious food, clean and reliable water, and other basic essentials. Warmer seas impact commercial and subsistence fisheries. Floods and droughts bring about disease and destruction to communities.
As a platform to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the COP26 Summit in Glasgow has set amongst its main goals to mobilize climate finance. Developed countries had earlier promised to raise at least US$100 billion in climate finance per year. During COP26, the objective was to secure and mobilize these funding commitments in order to secure global net zero emissions by 2050, to limit global temperature rise to just 1.5 degrees, and to support countries to adapt and protect vulnerable communities and natural habitats. In places like the Pacific, that would involve protecting and restoring ecosystems, building defenses, early warning systems and resilient infrastructure, and improving agriculture to avoid loss of homes, livelihoods and lives.
On November 8, USAID announced an ambitious target to mobilize $150 billion in public and private climate finance by 2030. USAID will catalyze the majority of this funding from private sector investments—as well as from public sector investments from partner country governments—through targeted programs and partnerships. USAID aims to catalyze 10 dollars of private sector financing for every one dollar of USAID public funding invested. The U.S. government public funds that USAID invests in these programs and partnerships to catalyze outside investments will be drawn from and aligned with the anticipated $11.4 billion in annual public climate financing announced by President Biden at the UN General Assembly.
USAID is also launching the Green Recovery Investment Platform. This will invest up to $250 million to mobilize $2.5 billion of private finance for adaptation and mitigation by 2027 by creating incentives and reducing risks for large-scale private investment to address the climate finance gap. Additionally, USAID is partnering with the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation to support mitigation and adaptation initiatives, including a loan guarantee on a portfolio of $25 million in loans through the Livelihoods Carbon Fund for carbon credits. USAID is also mobilizing public and private finance to transform the agriculture, health, water and other key sectors to achieve lower emissions and increased resilience.
Increased climate financing into the region means that Pacific Island countries will need to be equipped with the capacity to effectively implement climate change-related projects. Luckily, many Pacific Island countries have already been receiving this type of support from USAID.
Since 2017, the USAID Climate Ready Project has been delivering the Certificate IV in Project Management Practice course across the region in partnership with the University of the South Pacific’s Pacific Technical and Further Education (USP Pacific TAFE) section. The partnership with this internationally recognized regional institution means that the courses and capacity building opportunities adapted and rolled out by USAID Climate Ready and USP Pacific TAFE will be sustained beyond the project.
The five-month long project management course, conducted in both online and blended modes, has been aimed at professionally upskilling men and women in government, non-governmental organizations and the private sector who are responsible for the implementation of such projects.
Participants have already begun to reap the benefits of the course. Stella Koaipura of Papua New Guinea attributes her increased capacity to support and manage projects to her participation in the USAID Climate Ready project management course. “My increased knowledge and better understanding of project management has given me the confidence to do my work with great passion and I always want to do it well!”
USAID Climate Ready has also been targeting women’s inclusion and leadership development in the delivery of all-female project management courses with much success. One recently completed all-female cohort in Fiji achieved a rare 100 percent graduation pass rate. Participant Amelia Bola said having come from a male-dominated arena, the course was a breath of fresh air to be in a space with strong, like-minded women. She stated that the backdrop created a safe, enabling environment where the women could share and express their opinions and experiences and have them welcomed.
The benefits of the course have also been recognized by national governments with Hon. Eugene Amor, Secretary of Finance and Administration in the Federated States of Micronesia (Department of Finance and Administration) highlighting the significance of FSM building and possessing the local capacity to implement and manage climate change projects.
“Now we do not have to depend on outside Consultants who do not understand our culture. We are starting to fill the technical fields to manage projects and already have the cultural knowledge and the values. And when we marry these two together, [we] can steer these project outcomes to results that are socially inclusive and far more sustainable and prosperous.”
Since 2017, USAID Climate Ready has trained 460 people in project management, half of them women. Most of these are already working on climate resilience activities and will provide the resource to enable countries to quickly manage and implement the proposed new projects that are starting to flow into the region.
USAID