The Pacific Ocean and Climate Assessment (POCCA) report has provided a platform for communities to elevate their collective voices on to the global stage to highlight the realities of living with the impacts of climate change.
This is crucial as small vulnerable island states are at the receiving end of some of these impacts.
Those were the sentiments shared with the POCCA team during their recent country re-visit to Tuvalu, where they met with various stakeholders from communities and government to present the findings and outcomes of the report.
In addressing the importance of the report, Luka Selu the Director for the National Disaster Management Office, Tuvalu, believes that the community voices captured in the report will be critical when formulating policies.
“Often times, there’s an oversight in the commitments and engagements at least required for the communities to participate.”
“So, the work that the team have done is very critical and necessary for the government in terms of policy development and formulating sustainable development policies for the future,” he added.
“We’d be using this information as a baseline information for the government as well and how we can better enhance the commitment at the national level and also building our resilience at the community level”.
Moe Saitala Paulo, the Environment Impact Assessment Officer at the Department of Environment in Tuvalu also acknowledged the POCCA report and the work undertaken through the project.
She said the report also allowed communities to capture indigenous knowledge that was often relied upon to help adapt and mitigate the climatic changes communities were facing.
“What the POCCA project has done is one, giving the opportunity for the communities to speak out and two, record traditional knowledge because it is something that we lack.”
“It has also allowed communities to have that ownership of their thoughts and to know that what they shared has been well recorded and validated.”
Funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFAT), New Zealand, the three-year POCCA project is a collaborative effort between the Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD) through The University of the South Pacific’s (USP), Centre for Sustainable Futures (CSF) and the Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies at the University of Canterbury.
