The PACRES programme implementation sites in Papua New Guinea are Keapara Community under the Central Provincial Administration and Karama Community under the Gulf Provincial Administration. Key areas of implementation include water security, aquaculture, climate ready gardens and fuel-efficient cooking options.
1) Participatory Needs Analysis (PNA) for Karama completed,
2) Identification of Change Agents for Central Province completed,
3) WASH Training conducted on 25-28 November 2022,
4) Mangrove Planting and Awareness on Climate Change and Disaster Resilience conducted on 27 October 2022. .
The RCO PNG identified impacts of climate change and associated capacity needs in PNG through a desktop review. Papua New Guinea’s large land area with a wide range of topography, extensive lowlands with rainforests, savannah, grassland, freshwater swamps, upland montane rainforests and alpine grassland, expose it to various climate change impacts. Prominent climate issues that affects PNG include droughts, frost on land and soils, storm surges, flooding, sea level rise, landslides and pathogens (malaria). Capacity needs identified through the review include the need for a central repository for climate change projects, improvement in coordination of climate-related policies and plans to promote sustainable development, lack of Community Action and implementation of Local Development Plans, and capacity and awareness to address climate change associated knowledge gaps. Papua New Guinea’s Interim Climate Compatible Development Actin Plan, lists the following strategies to address the gap in capacity needs — recruitment of high-potential staff from the public, private and NGO sectors to lead and coordinate pilot projects, in collaboration with local partners to demonstrate impact. Capacity building through the process of learning by doing on pilot and demonstration projects and through targeted training sessions aimed at supporting scaling-up pilot projects.
As an initial step towards mainstreaming climate change and disaster risk management, the following local development plans are identified for PACRES geographical locations: Keapara Development Plans (Central Province Development Plan 2013–2017, Rigo District Development Plan 2018–2022); Karama Development Plans (Gulf Provincial Integrated Development Plan 2018–2022).
