Community Based Adaptation and Disaster Risk Reduction

Organizational Expertise Justification:

Members of the consortium have been working in Vanuatu for over 30 years. We have extensive experience working together and with the government of Vanuatu to help address the immediate and long-term needs of Vanuatu communities across the country. We also have strong experience in helping communities recover from the impacts of disaster events.

Members of this consortium were the key partners in a three year, DFAT-supported AU$2 million community-based adaptation project – Yumi stap redi long klaemet jenis – which pioneered a comprehensive approach to helping communities and local governments prepare for, and manage the immediate impacts of climate variability and extremes, while building the capacity of women, men, girls and boys to develop climate-resilient development pathways. CARE and Save the Children built on this foundation to implement a further 16-month, USAID-supported US$0.5 million community-based adaptation project, while Oxfam implemented a further three-year, Margaret A. Cargill-supported US$847,000 community-based resilience program which continued to build on existing networks and aimed to increase collaboration, knowledge sharing and support between communities, NGOs, relevant government departments and development partners around increasing community and government resilience. Our agencies have also worked in collaboration with communities from across the six provinces of Vanuatu, national civil society organisations and government to develop and implement disaster risk reduction projects, such as the DiPECHO funded “Be Better Prepared (Yumi Redi)” series of projects that focused on community-based disaster risk reduction activities and encouraged communities to form Disaster Management Committees and to support sustainable development action across a range of key sectors, including: livelihoods; water, sanitation and hygiene; education; and gender equality.

Our organizations have extensive experience developing and implementing large scale, long term projects across a range of sectors globally – including multi-year, multi-agency community-based adaptation projects across the Pacific, as well as Bangladesh, Indonesia, Laos, PNG, the Philippines, Thailand, Timor-Leste and Vietnam, valued at over AU$50 million in the past five years alone.

Vanuatu is among the most vulnerable countries on earth to the increasing impacts of climate change, including climate-related natural disasters and the effects of slow-onset events such as sea-level rise and ocean acidification.

As the effects of global warming manifest and the hazards of climate change arise at accelerating rates, there is a need to shift the paradigm towards the standardised and mainstreamed use of science-based climate information, at multiple timescales, to support resilient development pathways.

The proposed project will support this paradigm shift through the strengthening and application of Climate Information Services (CIS) in five targeted development sectors: tourism; agriculture; infrastructure; water and fisheries.

More specifically, the project will build the technical capacity in Vanuatu to harness and manage climate data; develop and deliver practical CIS tools and resources; support enhanced coordination and dissemination of tailored information; enhance CIS information and technology infrastructure; and support the application of relevant CIS through real-time development processes, for more resilient outcomes.

The project has a focus on addressing information gaps and priority needs of target beneficiaries at national, provincial and local community levels across the five priority sectors.

The project will deliver enhanced:

• capacity and capability of national development agents, to understand, access and apply CIS
• CIS communications, knowledge products, tools, and resources for practical application to development processes.
• reliability, functionality, utility and timeliness of underlying CIS delivery systems and data collection infrastructure.
• scientific data, information and knowledge of past, present and future climate to facilitate innovated and resilient development.

An Indigenous led Network of community Environmental Champions, working together for the protection of biodiversity, sustainable development, customary governance, and climate/disaster resilience within the Santo Mountain Chain Key Biodiversity Area of the Western Coastline of the Island of Espiritu Santo in the Republic of Vanuatu

Mission

The Santo Sunset Environment Network (SSEN) shall serve as a catalyst to support and empower individuals, villages and communities in the West Coast and North West Santo region in improving environmental protection and conservation; and to influence the design and implementation of effective, inclusive, resilient and sustainable development strategies in keeping with traditional livelihoods.

Charitable Purposes

To contribute to its Mission, the Network’s charitable purposes include the following:

(a) To prevent environmental degradation by affirming and amplifying existing knowledge, skills and expertise of the people of West and North West Santo

(b) Building new skills, knowledge, awareness and capacity in areas of environment, climate change and other topics

(c) Promoting and enabling of traditional knowledge concerning issues of environmental protection and sustainable development.

(d) Reduce negative human impacts on the environment

(e) Facilitate a sustainable transformation in the way West and North West Santo communities use resources, including on the land, forests, freshwater, the ocean, atmosphere, and energy.

(f) To prioritize sustainable development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

(g) To inspire government, business, community, and individual action related to the environment.

(h) To organize, support, inspire and coordinate Network members to work together and speak with one voice.

(i) To ensure inclusion of gender equity, human rights and development justice in environmental management and action

Oxfam International is a world-wide development organisation that mobilises the power of people against poverty. In the Pacific, we work with our partners to ensure that Pacific Islander women and men (specifically those that are poor, marginalised or excluded) are leading and shaping their development and where their voices are heard and acted on by those in power. In the Pacific, Oxfam’s regional office is based in Suva, Fiji, where our Fiji country office and our base for remote cluster management of the Polynesia/Micronesia country office are also located. We also have offices in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.

The Pacific Islands Climate Change Collaboration, Influencing and Learning (PACCCIL) project is a four year (2018 – 2021) project funded for the first two years by Australian NGO Cooperation Program (ANCP). It aims at strengthening the influencing capacity of civil society actors and networks to ensure that action on climate change in the Pacific region is more effective, inclusive and collaborative. The project will work with key climate change action networks in Vanuatu and at the regional level, as well as facilitate the organising and collective action of civil society actors in Solomon Islands and the Polynesia and Micronesia sub-regions against climate change.