A VT2 billion grant from the World Bank Group is set to reform unplanned urban settlements in Vanuatu and effectively improve the standard of living for many families.

It comes after the recent launching of the Vanuatu Affordable and Resilient Settlement (VARS) Project by the Vanuatu government and World Bank.

The project is the first of its kind in the Pacific region and the total cost is less than a VT3 billion grant. The money will cover unplanned urban settlements, particularly 23 unplanned settlements identified by Vanuatu authorities.

Ministry of Lands director-general Henry Vira has welcomed the assistance from World Bank.

“Vanuatu is exposed to multiple natural hazards, rapid urban growth rates, serviced land provision is slow, costly, and limited to high income groups, and low-and middle-income earners move into unplanned settlements in high hazard risk land with limited land registration and services leading to low quality of living environments high incidences of preventable diseases, and low-quality housing stock and increasing disaster risk in the settlements,” Vira said.

In 2016, the Vanuatu government requested assistance from the World Bank Group to address the growing problem of squatters in various disaster risk prone areas of Port Vila, he said.

There were two key questions for the technical assistance to focus on under the VARS, which are the future residential land and housing needs for low-and-middle income earners, and where and how the needs can be met given constraints of affordability and natural hazard risk.

The second is how the government can lead and enable activities and resources of public and private stakeholders to meet urban expansion needs, guide future development, and contribute to national economic growth and prosperity.

Main economic hub
Vira said the capital city Port Vila was the government’s and the country’s main economic hub, accounting for an estimated 65 percent of GDP.

“The city has an estimated population of 66,000 people living within the municipal boundaries. The municipal area plus surrounding peri-urban settlements with strong economic and social connectivity to the city center is home to closer to 114,000 people, almost 40 percent of the nation’s population,” he said.

“In-migration from other islands accounts for most of the urban growth of 60 percent, with the remaining 40 percent from natural growth of the working age urban population.

“Urban-rural income differentials and rural underemployment are key drivers for people moving to Port Vila and smaller towns such as Luganville, in search of employment, better wages, health services, and education opportunities.”

Vira said the pace of urbanisation limited institutional capacity, and resource constraints have impacted the quality and resilience of urban settlements in greater Port Vila and development over the past decades had largely been unplanned and unregulated, resulting in the emergence of 23 informal settlements within the municipality and adjacent peri-urban areas of SHEFA Province.

He said people and assets were increasingly locating in marginalised and hazard-prone areas, including floodplains, steep hillsides susceptible to landslides, and coastal areas exposed to tsunamis and inundation.

“Households living in unplanned settlements with insecure tenure are reluctant to invest in resilient structures, increasing their vulnerability,” Vira said.

Two priority approaches
The VARS project embraces two priority approaches: retrofitting existing settlements through upgrading to improve services and resilience and developing new models for planned and serviced urban expansion.

Resident Representative of World Bank for Vanuatu and Solomon Islands Annette Leith said Vanuatu was one of the most highly prone and vulnerable countries in the world to natural disasters.

“The rapid pace of urbanisation and the growth of unplanned settlements adds a new dimension to this challenge,” Leith said.

“I applaud the government and the people of Vanuatu for the many steps taken to build resilience through policies, investments, strengthening of institutions and building capacity at the national, provincial and community levels.

“I am pleased that the VARS Project will provide financial and technical resource to help implement some of these policies and provide resilient investments. This is an exciting project being led by the Vanuatu government in partnership and with support from the World Bank.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

“Climate change may be slower but its momentum is enormous.” – Stuart Chape, Acting Director-General, South Pacific Regional Environmental Programme (SPREP).

Does anyone remember Greta Thunberg, the young Swedish environmentalist who caused a worldwide climate change stir – particularly among the neoliberal believers – but was voted Time magazine Person of the Year 2019 for her actions before the coronavirus pandemic struck?

It all seems so long ago now that we have a new age of covid-19, but wait, her pleas last year in front of the United Nations served as a warning as does the call from Stuart Chape, Acting Director-General of SREP, late in June 2020 that climate change is still a stark reality – especially for the Pacific.

The momentum for climate change might have slowed, but it still looms larger than life as economies open up again producing greenhouse gases.

READ MORE: InfoPacific – the geojournalism project

As Stephanie Sageo-Tapungu, a doctorate candidate from the seaside town of Madang in Papua New Guinea, says:

“The sea levels are still rising, and the climate is unpredictable now, so we cannot be really sure or predict ‘like this is what is going to happen’.

“The sea levels are going really high; parts of the islands are under the sea and I’ve seen that firsthand because it is happening in my Madang province.”

Sageo-Tapungu adds: “Having a closed economy and other activities did a lot of good when it comes to climate change, but I think it put a lot of strain on people and that can lead to a lot of social problems such as the crime rate going up.”

Illegal logging
Laurens Ikinia, a West Papuan masters student, studying in Aotearoa New Zealand, says that while covid-19 has slowed climate change, his major concern is the illegal logging going on back home in his Indonesian-ruled province.

“A year ago, the governors of his province were invited to attend events held in Florencia, the capital of Caquetá department in the Colombian Amazon, for the civil society, indigenous and local communities, national governments, and international donors for the 2019 annual meeting of the Governors’ Climate and Forests (GCF) Task Force,”  Ikinia says.

“We have forests that are the second-largest producers of oxygen in the world.

“However, I would say because they have been given special autonomy to logging with regulations – and it is still happening in West Papua – so you have to say authorities are not really committed to the climate change agreements,” he says.

“In terms of covid-19 we don’t really know the outcomes or the impacts it has had on climate change because it is just too early to see any reports done on it even though you are aware that covid-19 would bring some good results of in terms of carbon dioxide sinks.

“But when it comes to the economy, from reports I’ve heard in recent days people are being affected by this pandemic and the local communities, unfortunately, cannot survive without help from the government,” he says.

However, SREP’s climate change advisor Espen Ronneberg maintains work is ongoing to address the issues which were thrashed out at the Conference of Parties to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP23) in Bonn, Germany.

Pledge to phase out coal
Countries pledged to phase out the use of coal and bring global temperatures down by 1.5 degrees centigrade.

Chaired by Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama, the summit offered high hopes of gaining solutions and agreements.

However, the Nationally Determined Contributions (countries) (NDCs) continued working against the smaller fragile nations.

Ronneberg says work is still needed, and is going at present in spite of no face-to-face meetings, and technical support is being done remotely – or in some cases where there is in-country expertise (like consultants) they are able to assist SPREP which also faced  challenges to get equipment shipped.

He adds that covid-19 has demonstrated a new global phenomenon which has impacted not just on climate change but on social and environmental structures.

“Dramatically so – this has impacted on economic, social, and environmental scales/levels, and is what we have been saying about climate change for decades,” he says.

“Even though the most conservative estimates anticipate historic declines in carbon emissions this year because of the pandemic, the atmosphere continues to be loading up on too much carbon,” he says.

Claims backed up by lab reports
Ronneberg backs up his claims from lab reports such as that in Hawai’i.

“Atmospheric observations and measurements from labs such as that in Hawaii are observing that we are not seeing dramatic reductions in road transport emissions, nor from electricity generation, only flights and some maritime. Recall, the atmosphere takes quite some time to react to emissions – it’s a fairly turbid system, and gases can linger for many years as well,” he says.

Andrea Ma’ahanua, a Solomon Islander and the education chairperson at the University of the South Pacific (USP) Students Association in Fiji, says she personally believes that covid-19 has impacted on climate change initiatives in her country in various ways.

“Climate change initiative proposals would have to be put on hold due to the current COVID-19 situation.  Due to travel restrictions, expatriates with technical knowledge in this area cannot travel into the country to help facilitate climate change initiatives,” she says.

“Furthermore, movement of locals has been restricted due to the imposed lockdown and in addition, funding initially allocated to climate change initiatives would most likely be diverted to covid-19 related initiatives and activities,

“That is evidently a priority under current circumstances. Therefore, this would result in the decline in climate change initiatives within the country.”

The world’s dependency on each other had greatly impacted on people she went on to say.

Rapid covid-19 spread
“The rapid spread of covid-19 around the world and its impact on our way of life, social structures and economies indicate how globalisation has created interdependency between world states,” she says.

“This global phenomenon has altered our way of life in terms of loss of jobs, a decline in economic activities and restrictions on people’s freedom of movement.

“All activities have ultimately come to a standstill or been changed accordingly to align with current covid-19 regulations.

“This is apparent in the Solomon Islands, where government revenue has substantially decreased as a result of the decline in economic activities.  Furthermore, locals struggle to support their families under the current situation and there has been a noticeable movement of people from urban areas to rural villages in face of this economic hardships,” she says.

“In regard to the re-opening of borders to keep climate change down, I personally believe governments should continue to impose movement restrictions.”

In order to keep the Solomon Islands economy afloat, the government must allow technical staff specialised in the field of climate change or other key economic areas to enter the country, she believes.

And, yes, she thinks climate change has been pushed into the background by covid-19.

Less focus on climate
“I personally observed less focus on climate change initiatives in the Solomon Islands under the of covid-19 situation.  More and more stories being published in the Solomon Islands in previous months have been centred on covid-19 regulations and the state of emergency [SOE].

“In previous meetings, climate change was regarded as the utmost priority on the discussion table.  However, given the covid-19 phenomenon, there has been a major shift of government attention toward covid-19 preventative measures.  This means that climate change would be viewed as the last item of priority on the discussion table,” she says.

However, Richard Clark, who is the Special Assistant to the President (David Panuelo) and Public Information Officer for the Federated States of Micronesia, says climate change initiatives have continued to grow but at a slower pace.

“An example of continuing accomplishments is that in July 2020, President David Panuelo signed Public Law 21-76 which formally prohibited the importation of styrofoam and one-time-use plastic bags,” he says.

“However, the nations’ Blue Prosperity Micronesia programme – which intends to protect 30 percent of the nation’s marine resources – has delayed its scientific expedition until 2021.”

The Federated States of Micronesia is less dependent on air travel and therefore affected less in climate change pollution from that source, as they are from shipping, he says.

“The short answer is that air travel makes up an an incredibly small footprint in global greenhouse emissions. The global shipping industry – on which the FSM is reliant – and the energy sector at large make up the overwhelming majority of emissions,” he says.

Covid-free daily life remains
“As the FSM remains covid-19 free, daily life and structures remain largely the same. However, the pandemic has crippled the tourism sector with approximately 70 percent of formal employees in the sector either unemployed or at significantly reduced hours,” he says of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic globally on daily life.

“The FSM’s largest sources of revenue are through fisheries and through the Compact of Free Association, so from a purely government perspective the economic impacts have not been felt as hard – yet,” he says

“The price of tuna has decreased substantially, which will affect the Pacific region’s fisheries revenues in the next fiscal year. The nation projects a substantial economic decline,” he says.

However, Clark has an opinion too to offer those who would weigh up re-opening the economy as opposed to staying covid-19 safe as a way to keep climate change down?

“The covid-19 pandemic doesn’t play a significant role in fixing the world’s issues with climate change.

“President Panuelo is of the view that economies can die and be revived but human beings cannot be.

“The broader public opinion in the FSM is that the nation ought to keep its borders closed until a vaccine is prepared, but the focus there is on human health. environmental health, by contrast, has not yet arrived in the discussions in either the National Covid-19 Task Force or in the president’s meetings with his Cabinet,” he says.

Backward step? – yes and no
And has he seen evidence of climate change initiatives taking a backward step in the face of covid-19?

“In some respects, yes – and in some respects, no,” he says.

“In the answer of yes: covid-19 has delayed the construction and implementation of the integrated coconut processing facility in Tonoas, Chuuk, which beyond adding significant economic growth to the nation as arguably its most promising development opportunity, would also power Tonoas with sustainable energy,” he says.

“In the answer no: in July 2020 the nation prohibited the importation of styrofoam and one-time-use plastic bags; other climate change related initiatives remain ongoing.”

So, while Pacific countries remained constrained by covid-19, their ambitions to curb climate change remains a very large factor at the back of their minds.

This is the third of a series of articles by the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch as part of an environmental project funded by the Internews’ Earth Journalism Network (EJN) Asia-Pacific initiative.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Early in March, Papua New Guinea began its chairmanship of next month’s Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit by receiving many senior officials for the opening set of planning meetings.

The lead-up to the APEC summit, expected to become a key opportunity for PNG to unlock its economic potential, has been inundated with talks on trade and investment.

As the smallest and poorest member of APEC, Papua New Guinea has framed its chairmanship as an opportunity to cash in on the digital revolution and its benefits in connectivity and employment.

READ MORE: PNG government faces mounting pressure over Maserati splurge

The chair of APEC Senior Officials, Ambassador Ivan Pomaleu, underlined PNG’s participation in APEC as “leverage” to maintain its domestic policies according to the group.

“The work that has come out of APEC has allowed investors to come on shore and be part of our business community. You really need to think in terms of what sort of structural reform and ease of business activities we’ve been doing and that have made it possible for new investments in PNG. Those are pegged on important APEC principles.” Pomaleu told APEC Bulletin.

He added that conversations surrounding connectivity, particularly in sustainable development and climate change, were important to PNG.

A month before the summit, however, this agenda has seemingly been neglected with the import of 40 Maserati Quattroporte luxury sedans to be used by APEC leaders.

One of the controversial Maserati cars that have arrived in Papua New Guinea for APEC 2018. The market value is about re[orted;y about K229,000 (NZ$110,000) each. Image: EMTV NewsCondemned purchase
The revelation of the PNG government’s purchase of these vehicles, which range in cost between $209,000 and $345,000 in Australia, has been widely condemned as an example of poor governance at a time when the country faces pressing health, education, law and order, and environmental issues.

While PNG’s APEC Minister Justin Tkatchenko has told media that the costs of the Maseratis will be recovered via prospective buyers, this remains to be seen.

While the minister has not disclosed the initial costs of both the fleet and cars, PNG has unveiled plans underway to build a 400 million kina (NZ$180 million) coal-powered plant – a far cry from its attentiveness to sustainable development.

According to the Post-Courier, a memorandum of agreement has been reached “to build a coal-fired power plant in Lae”, Morobe province.

Although this agreement is a step towards meeting the energy needs of Lae consumers, it takes PNG two steps back in its commitment to mitigating climate change.

PNG’s gravitation towards cheap, non-renewable energy such as coal signals a complete disregard of its pledge to the Paris Climate Agreement.

PNG is already experiencing the effects of climate change which can be seen in the need to relocate Carteret Islanders and the dwindling access to clean drinking water, to name a few issues.

Defiant action
Despite these effects and coal being a key driver of climate change, Energy Minister Sam Basil is defiantly going ahead with building the electricity plant.

According to The National, Basil said that PNG had “been denied that right (to burn coal) for a very long time”.

He added that “big nations are not reducing [coal emission]”, thus PNG needs a quota for burning coal to provide cheaper electricity which would subsequently lead to more jobs.

Chris Lahberger from the anti-coal group, Nogat Coal PNG, told Radio NZ that this move was uneconomical despite the developer Mayur Resources’ claims of increased employment and investment in a sustainable research institute.

Although PNG is not the only developing country to have resorted to coal as a source of low-cost electricity, it does have a responsibility to its people considering the Climate Investment Fund’s investment of $25 million.

As reported by Devex, this funding is the largest with a focus on delivering “transformational change in addressing the current and future threats from climate change and related hazards in” PNG.

A snapshot of the Climate Investment Fund’s assistance to PNG indicates a key focus on building resilience in the agriculture sector along with the mitigation of climate extremes.

Climate accountability
Consequently, this begs the question of accountability in climate change aid as plans like the Mayur Resources’ coal-fired power plant are counteractive.

There is a pattern of financial aid being confined to large institutions and governments while communities suffer, as noted by Caritas New Zealand director Julianne Hickey.

“We’ve heard time and time again from the Solomon Islands through to Tonga, to Papua New Guinea, that it is not reaching those who need it most and those who’ve done the least to cause the issues of climate change,” Hickey told Radio NZ.

Apart from PNG’s plan to burn coal for electricity, it has an alarming rate of illegal logging which has adverse effects for its indigenous communities.

According to Global Witness, “tens of thousands of Papua New Guinean people are having their land stolen by their own government”.

PNG’s Foreign Minister Rimbink Pato, however, refuted this claim in an interview with Radio NZ.

He emphasised that the PNG government has taken appropriate measures with regard to the illegal logging and that a policy is underway via the Minister for Forests.

Summit talking point
Looking at climate change efforts as a whole, the minister added that it is a talking point for the APEC summit.

“It’s one of the key issues there, and what we’re doing and how the world can connect. That’s why we’ve asked the rest of the Pacific Island countries, their leaders to come so that each of them can tell their story in their own way to the leaders of the world… because the impacts of climate change are unique to each country. It’s not the one and the same.”

Talking point or not, PNG’s implementation efforts are lacking and greater accountability is required of the government.

If PNG’s absence from the High Ambition Coalition is anything to go by, it indicates poor governance to the Papua New Guineans feeling the impact of climate change.

With Fiji and the Marshall Islands leading the way in climate change efforts, PNG’s status as “big brother” not only wanes but projects corruption at its very core.

Pauline Mago-King is a masters student based at Auckland University of Technology and is researching gender-based violence in Papua New Guinea. She compiled this report for the Pacific Media Centre’s Asia-Pacific Journalism Studies course.

Twitter: @iamatalau04

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Only the remaking of the human world in a generation can now prevent serious, far reaching and once-avoidable climate change impacts, according to the global scientific community.

In a major report released yesterday, the UN’s climate science body found limiting warming to 1.5C, compared to 2C, would spare a vast sweep of people and life on earth from devastating impacts.

To hold warming to this limit, the scientists said unequivocally that carbon pollution must fall to “net zero” in around three decades: a huge and immediate transformation, for which governments have shown little inclination so far.

READ MORE: Global warming of 1.5C summary for policymakers

GLOBAL WARMING OF 1.5C -THE REPORT

“The next few years are probably the most important in our history,” said Debra Roberts, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) research into the impacts of warming.

-Partners-

The report from the IPCC is a compilation of existing scientific knowledge, distilled into a 33-page summary presented to governments. If and how policymakers respond to it will decide the future of vulnerable communities around the world.

“I have no doubt that historians will look back at these findings as one of the defining moments in the course of human affairs,” the lead climate negotiator for small island states Amjad Abdulla said. “I urge all civilised nations to take responsibility for it by dramatically increasing our efforts to cut the emissions responsible for the crisis.”

What happens in the next few months will impact ON the future of the Paris Agreement and the global climate

Abdulla is from the Maldives. It is estimated that half a billion people in countries like his rely on coral ecosystems for food and tourism. The difference between 1.5C and 2C is the difference between losing 70-90 percent of coral by 2100 and reefs disappearing completely, the report found.

Small island states
Small island states were part of a coalition that forced the Paris Agreement to consider both a 1.5C and 2C target. Monday’s report is a response to that dual goal. Science had not clearly defined what would happen at each mark, nor what measures would be necessary to stay at 1.5C.

As the report was finalised, the UN Secretary-General’s special representative on sustainable energy Rachel Kyte praised those governments. “They had the sense of urgency and moral clarity,” she said, adding that they knew “the lives that would hang in the balance between 2[C] and 1.5[C]”.

37 things you need to know about 1.5C global warming

At 2C, stresses on water supplies and agricultural land, as well as increased exposure to extreme heat and floods, will increase, risking poverty for hundreds of millions, the authors said.

Thousands of plant and animal species would see their liveable habitat cut by more than half. Tropical storms will dump more rain from the Philippines to the Caribbean.

“Everybody heard of what happened to Dominica last year,” Ruenna Hayes, a delegate to the IPCC from St Kitts and Nevis, told Climate Home News. “I cannot describe the level of absolute alarm that this caused not only me personally, but everybody I know.”

Around 65 people died when Hurricane Maria hit the Caribbean island in September 2017, destroying much of it.

In laying out what needs to be done, the report described a transformed world that will have to be built before babies born today are middle aged. In that world 70-85 percent of electricity will be produced by renewables.

More nuclear power
There will be more nuclear power than today. Gas, burned with carbon capture technology, will still decline steeply to supply just supply 8 percent of power. Coal plants will be no more. Electric cars will dominate and 35-65 percent of all transport will be low or no-emissions.

To pay for this transformation, the world will have invested almost a trillion dollars a year, every year to 2050.

Our relationship to land will be transformed. To stabilise the climate, governments will have deployed vast programmes for sucking carbon from the air. That will include protecting forests and planting new ones.

It may also include growing fuel to be burned, captured and buried beneath the earth. Farms will be the new oil fields. Food production will be squeezed. Profoundly difficult choices will be made between feeding the world and fuelling it.

The report is clear that this world avoids risks compared to one that warms to 2C, but swerves judgement on the likelihood of bringing it into being. That will be for governments, citizens and businesses, not scientists, to decide.

During the next 12 months, two meetings will be held at which governments will be asked to confront the challenge in this report: this year’s UN climate talks in Poland and at a special summit held by UN secretary general Antonio Guterres in September 2019.

The report’s authors were non-committal about the prospects. Jim Skea, a co-chair at the IPCC, said: “Limiting warming to 1.5C is possible within the laws of chemistry and physics but doing so would require unprecedented changes.”

Graphic from the IPCC’s special report on 1.5C.

‘Monumental goal’
Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and a former lead author of the IPCC, said: “If this report doesn’t convince each and every nation that their prosperity and security requires making transformational scientific, technological, political, social and economic changes to reach this monumental goal of staving off some of the worst climate change impacts, then I don’t know what will.”

The scientist have offered a clear prescription: the only way to avoid breaching the 1.5C limit is for humanity to cut its CO2 emissions by 45 percent below 2010 levels by 2030 and reach “net-zero” by around 2050.

But global emissions are currently increasing, not falling.

The EU, one of the most climate progressive of all major economies, aims for a cut of around 30 percent by 2030 compared to its own 2010 pollution and 77-94 percent by 2050. It is currently reviewing both targets and says this report will inform the decisions.

If the EU sets a carbon neutral goal for 2050 it will join a growing group of governments seemingly in line with a mid-century end to carbon – including California (2045), Sweden (2045), UK (2050 target under consideration) and New Zealand (2050).

But a fundamental tenet of climate politics is that expectations on nations are defined by their development. If the richest, most progressive economies on earth set the bar at 2045-2050, where will China, India and Latin America end up? If the EU aims for 2050, the report concludes that Africa will need to have the same goal.

Some of the tools needed are available, they just need scaling up. Renewable deployment would need to be six times faster than it is today, said Adnan Z Amin, the director-general of the International Renewable Energy Agency. That was “technically feasible and economically attractive”, he added.

Innovation, social change
Other aspects of the challenge require innovation and social change.

But just when the world needs to go faster, the political headwinds in some nations are growing. Brazil, home to the world’s largest rainforest, looks increasingly likely to elect the climate sceptic Jair Bolsonaro as president.

The world’s second-largest emitter – the US – immediately distanced itself from the report, issuing a statement that said its approval of the summary “should not be understood as US endorsement of all of the findings and key messages”.

It said it still it intended to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.

The summary was adopted by all governments at a closed-door meeting between officials and scientists in Incheon, South Korea that finished on Saturday. The US sought and was granted various changes to the text. Sources said the interventions mostly helped to refine the report. But they also tracked key US interests – for example, a mention of nuclear energy was included.

Sources told CHN that Saudi Arabia fought hard to amend a passage that said investment in fossil fuel extraction would need to fall by 60 percent between 2015 and 2050. The clause does not appear in the final summary.

But still, according to three sources, the country has lodged a disclaimer with the report, which will not be made public for months. One delegate said it rejected “a very long list of paragraphs in the underlying report and the [summary]”.

Republished under a Creative Commons licence.

A Nasa satellite photo showing the retreating extent of sea ice in the Arctic. The latest IPCC climate change report says unprecedented action is needed to keep global temperature rises to 1.5C. Image: IPCC

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz