Climate Change Adaptation & Disaster Risk Reduction

1. Project description: [Brief description of project, key activities and outputs, how will it be implemented?]

Description of Project: The proposed project is an initiative of the Department of Environmental Protection and Conservation (DEPC) under the Ministry of Climate Change (MoCC), to enhance waste management at the Bouffa Landfill. Bouffa landfill is managed by the Port Vila City Council (PVCC) that is under the Department of Local Authorities (DLA). This proposal seeks the support of the GCF Framework to:

1. Procure a landfill weighbridge tobe stationed at the Etas Bouffa Landfill in efforts to enhance waste monitoring overtime to ensure that our reporting obligations in waste management are met at the national, regional and international level.
2. Establishment of an office at the landfill including the gate house.
3. Institutional strengthening and capacity building for DEPC at the Landfill facility.
4. Fencing the 57 Hectares of land where Etas Bouffa Landfill is located.

Key Activities and Implementation: There are only four key activities of the project:

1. Procurement of the landfill weighbridge to support monitoring and data collection in waste management, currently all records are estimated and manually registered. The installation of a weighbridge will allow us to digitize our monitoring and data collection.
2. The establishment of an office at the landfill to complement the installation of the weighbridge.
3. A budget for a qualified data management officer and a maintenance officer who will be stationed at the office to oversee the data collection and maintenance of the weighbridge respectively within the five (5) year duration of the project.
4. The fencing of the landfill is a longstanding issue, fencing the premises permanently will reduce the number of unauthorized vehicles and persons from entering. At the same time enforcing waste collection businesses and also opportunity to formalize waste pickers to segregate incoming waste, waste audits  and other related activities.

1. Project description: [Brief description of project, key activities and outputs, how will it be implemented?]

The Community Resilience Partnership Program (CRPP) is a regional partnership program of the Asian Development Bank to support selected countries in Asia and the Pacific region, including Vanuatu to (i) scale up local adaptation solutions in alignment with national climate priorities; (ii) finance local adaptation solutions that explicitly address the climate and poverty nexus and are implemented in the context of large-scale poverty reduction programs; and (iii) work with local institutions and communities to build long-term capacity for dealing with climate shocks and stresses. By doing so, the CRPP aims to address the points of procedural and distributive justice so that the people most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change can engage in a fair process and receive a fair share of the benefits of adaptation efforts.

The CRPP comprises two separate but interlinked components; the CRPP Trust Fund (TF) focusing on upstream support to strengthen the enabling environment required for implementing local adaptation measures at scale; and the CRPP Investment Fund (IF) focusing on the efficient roll-out of local adaptation measures through downstream investments.

The TF (NOT funded by GCF) will provide technical assistance and grant resources financed by development partners and administered by ADB, to selected countries to implement the following three outputs: (1) increased awareness and capacity on use of climate risk information to improve decision-making at the local level; (2) institutions’ ability to develop and deliver local adaptation investments at scale strengthened; and (3) large-scale local adaptation projects identified and designed in the context of wider poverty reduction programs. The TF will include a special gender window to ensure all CRPP financed activities mainstream gender equality and to promote women-focused investments in adaptation.

The IF (WITH support from GCF) will provide grant financing as part of ADB projects, to seven selected countries namely, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Pakistan, PNG, Timor Leste, and Vanuatu to implement three climate related outputs (4) information and systems for delivering applied climate-risk informed local investments at scale; (5) climate resilient pro-poor livelihoods investments implemented; and (6) pro-poor climate adaptation infrastructure investments implemented.

This program proposal is to request the Green Climate Fund (GCF) to provide grant financing for the CRPP IF. Once the program proposal is approved by the GCF, countries can access grant resources from the CRPP IF against ADB financed projects that are included in ADB’s Country Operations Business Plan for respective countries. The projects would need to meet the strict eligibility criteria set by the CRPP IF (see GCF Proposal - sections B.3.(3) and B.4. and annexe 2.4). The projects will be implemented as national projects in the country, in line with national climate priorities and with an explicit focus to support the poor and vulnerable population.

At this stage, at least one potential project has been pre-identified for each participating country. Information on these pre-identified projects is provided in the GCF Proposal (section B.3.(2) and Annex 2.3). For Vanuatu, the pre-identified project is “Climate Change and COVID-19:  Building Comprehensive Resilience in Poor and Vulnerable Groups” (hereafter referred to as VP1). This builds on baseline investment funding from the ADB.

Note: as with all participating countries, for Vanuatu the pre-identified project is only at the concept stage and at the early stages of design – both the baseline and the outputs related to the GCF funded Outputs. This is subject to concept approval, further design, appraisal and full approval. Hence, for this Form, not all sections can be completed at this stage.

Subsequent to GCF approval of CRPP, further additional country projects (one or more) may be identified in Vanuatu. No information can be provided on these further projects at this stage. The identification and selection and design will be in line with the detailed criteria and process set out in Annex 2.4 of Full Proposal.

The pre-identified Vanuatu Project: Climate Change and COVID-19:  Building Comprehensive Resilience in Poor and Vulnerable Groups (VP1)

The VP1 Project Outcome is the “Capabilities of poor and vulnerable households in Vanuatu to withstand and adapt to the impacts of climate change and global pandemics (notably COVID-19) improved.”

The proposed GCF support takes place within the context of ongoing ADB/Government support to poor and marginalized groups to build resilience, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As demonstrated repeatedly in recent climate disasters and through the pandemic, the poor and marginalized communities and sections of society in Vanuatu are the most negatively impacted by externally generated crises. Further, the factors providing resilience to climate change to vulnerable populations are typically the same factors that provide resilience to global pandemics. Hence, the GCF support will collaborate with the ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic to create comprehensive resilience amongst the vulnerable sections of Vanuatu society – thereby generating important synergies.

The project will respond to climate challenges by creating, modifying and enhancing climate responsive social protection systems and enhancing climate resilient livelihood support mechanisms, as follows. 

(i) Social protection: Existing initiatives provide targeted support payments to the vulnerable. These are temporary, typically raised in response to disasters, and dependent on international partners. Moreover, they do not consider climate change impacts, they are small scale and lack the institutional capacity required to upscale. Given the projected increase in extreme weather events due to climate change, Vanuatu requires social protection systems that are able to effectively protect the vulnerable against climate shocks. Thus, the project will strengthen the capacity of social protection systems to function in advance of and through climate disasters, to respond to the specific challenges of both slow and rapid onset climate disasters, and to meet the needs of the most vulnerable.

(ii) Livelihood support: Building on existing, related initiatives in Vanuatu, the project will also help vulnerable populations to adapt to climate change and become climate resilient by establishing schemes that develop resilient livelihood skills and practices. The project includes a strong focus on women.

Volcanic island countries in the Pacific are facing severe issues related to environmental degradation and climate variability. Deforestation and unsustainable land and water use, uncontrolled livestock grazing on fragile lands and poorly planned settlements in environmental and hazard-sensitive areas are drivers of environmental degradation. Drought is a major natural hazard all Pacific Island Countries (PICs) are facing, with agricultural drought presenting a particular problem for the leeward side of larger volcanic islands.

Alongside land resources, the economic and social well-being of PICs are dependent upon the quality and quantity of their freshwater resources. However, the ability of small island countries to effectively develop and manage their water sectors is often constrained by their small size and limited human resource base. In many island countries, factors such as increasing demand for water, rainfall variability, storm water runoff, inadequate sanitation, and waste disposal, threaten economic development and human health.

Fresh groundwater resources in volcanic islands of the Pacific are particularly abundant, as demonstrated by the plethora of freshwater springs, private and public groundwater bores and of major water bottling industries, abstracting substantial volumes of fresh groundwater, particularly in the larger volcanic islands of Fiji. These volcanic aquifers, bearing good potential to meet the needs of domestic and agricultural water demands have barely been developed. On the contrary, groundwater development is concentrated along the more densely populated coastal areas, targeting highly vulnerable shallow coastal aquifers.

In December 2020, the GEF-7 project concept “Enhancing water-food security and climate resilience in volcanic island countries of the Pacific” was approved by the GEF Council for design by FAO (Implementing Agency) in collaboration with SPC (Executing Agency). The USD 6 million full-size regional project sits under the International Waters GEF focal area and will be implemented in Fiji, Vanuatu, and Solomon Islands over a period of 5 years. A project preparation grant was administered by the GEF to assist with the project design aiming for submission of the complete project documentation by December 2021 to the GEF Secretariat for consideration.

The overall project objective is “to enhance water and food security and climate resilience, sustain ecosystem services, and relieve pressure on over-exploited coastal aquifers by expanding and assessing the role of volcanic aquifers and by introducing sound groundwater governance frameworks in selected volcanic island states of the Pacific.”

A project framework was developed in 2020 for the purposes of submitting the Project Identification Form (PIF) to the GEF. The framework was developed through preliminary consultations between SPC, FAO, and the lead government agencies from the three project countries. The national project design workshop for Vanuatu, conducted on 29 June 2021, was an opportunity for the framework to be presented to a larger stakeholder audience and reviewed in terms of current national relevance, alignment with national strategies, and opportunities to address pressing issues which may have missed during the concept stage. The project components with associated Outcomes and expected activities are presented below:

Component 1. Expanding and assessing the role of groundwater resources.

Outcome 1.1 The knowledge of the exploitable groundwater resources is improved in the three project island states.

In many of the larger volcanic islands in the Pacific there are indications of the presence of large, exploitable groundwater resources at economically reachable depths and resilient to climate variability. Such indications include the presence of perennial springs and of mineral bottling industries producing significant volume of drinking water. It is proposed that the following main activities take place under this component during implementation:

1. Reconnaissance aquifer mapping at the national scale to expand the knowledge on the current state of major aquifers ( up to 2 major islands per country).
2. In-depth technical and economic feasibility studies for the identification of strategic use and development of volcanic aquifers.
3. Facilitated dialogue between governments and public and private investors (e.g.: BOT schemes) on the exploitation of the most attractive “prospects” emerging from the feasibility assessments.

Component 2. Introducing sound groundwater governance frameworks.

Outcome 2.1. Sound groundwater governance frameworks and policies are adopted.

The main objective under this component is to facilitate the adoption of aquifer management plans following the recommendations and methodologies of the “Groundwater Governance Project” (GEF/FAO/World Bank/UNESCO/IAH), further supporting the implementation of key priority areas of the Strategic Action Programme (SAP) of the Pacific SIDS. Outputs under this component are expected to support governments with the drafting of water resources legislations and national groundwater exploitation policies. Main proposed activities would include:

1. Development of the conceptual models of identified primary aquifers and diagnostic studies of their current state.
2. Development of participatory future scenarios of water-food security management with local communities through a set of recommendations towards informed management of groundwater resources.
3. Drafting of Aquifer Management Plans.

Component 3. Tackling hot spots.

Outcome 3.1. Groundwater is integrated into IWRM policies and practices.

The proposed activities under this component include targeted on-the-ground interventions necessary to achieve the proposed Outputs under Components 1 and 2 and other specific objectives under Component 3. To the extent possible and in consultation with the project countries, “hot spots” will be identified within the “primary aquifer” areas identified under Component 1. The intention is to address and potentially resolve priority issues of concern related to groundwater, including groundwater production infrastructure for agricultural and drinking water purposes. An additional objective will be to demonstrate on-the-ground ways to integrate groundwater governance principles and methodologies within the context of IWRM policies and practices. Main proposed activities include:

1. The drilling of test holes and monitoring bores to support aquifer assessments and groundwater monitoring, respectively, to improve aquifer management and to address conflicts between industry, agriculture, domestic and environment users.
2. The implementation of land use management measures (land contouring, fencing, land use mapping) to strengthen environmental and water resources sustainability and to address land degradation.
3. The demonstration of small-scale groundwater development schemes to address water supply issues, enhance agricultural activities, and strengthen water and food security.
4. The drafting of national operational plans to better coordinate the management and operation of drilling activities.

Component 4. Reinforcing institutional capacity.

Outcome 4.1. Enhanced national capacities in groundwater assessment, monitoring and management.

The main objective under this component is to enhance the institutional capacities in groundwater assessment, management, and monitoring in the three project countries. This will be achieved through:

1. Participation of national staff from relevant ministries in groundwater investigations, reconnaissance surveys, and remotely sensed data analysis.
2. Active participation of stakeholders in the development of Aquifer Management Plans and their application.
3. Ad hoc trainings organized at regional level replicating previous successful training models (e.g. Melanesian drillers training) which also provided direct water security outcomes for communities in fragile areas.
4. Knowledge exchanges at regional and global level (North-South and South-South Cooperation).
5. Active participation in IW LEARN activities.

The project components are closely connected to regional and international agreements (Sendai framework, Sustainable Development Goals, Framework for Resilient Development in the Pacific), and will strengthen, through an inclusive approach, the linkages between government and the community, and between previous and existing GEF-funded projects (IWRM, R2R, MCA). Further, the project components are consistent with a number of national goals and strategic targets identified in the “2016-2030 National Sustainable Development Plan” for Vanuatu. Recognising that water security is an issue relevant to multiple sectors and actors, the project will also focus on the development and strengthening of existing and new partnerships with government and non-government organisations at the local, national, and regional levels.