Climate Change

George Carter is taking part in the 2nd Pacific Island Universities Regional Network forum this week that focuses on exploring the challenges faced by the Pacific in its goal to achieve sustainability.

One of these challenges is the lack of support given to universities in the region in their contribution to the fight against climate change.

FRDP is the world’s first integrated regional framework to build resilience to climate change and disasters.

The FRDP was developed in response to recommendations from the Pacific Platform for Disaster Risk Management and Pacific Climate Change Roundtable in 2011 and endorsed by the Pacific Island Forum Leaders in 2012.

The Framework aims to ensure that climate change and disasters are understood as a development challenge with priority actions to address vulnerability to climate change and disasters and build resilience across all sectors.

The government said it was moving people because of the threat they face from climate change as much of the town is low lying.

Some of the families in Sogi were settled there generations ago after their ancestors had been brought to Samoa by the country's then German colonial masters.

Ownership of the land was eventually vested in them but a 76 year-old member of one the affected families, Nanai Liu Tokuma, said the government is violating his family's rights to own and live on the land.

The agricultural union Agri SA has requested over $1 billion in government subsidies to help farmers through the crisis, but a cut-price solution could soon be available -- from an unlikely source.

Johannesburg schoolgirl Kiara Nirghin, 16, recently won the Google Science Fair's Community Impact Award for the Middle East and Africa with her submission "No More Thirsty Crops."

The opening address was delivered by the Prime Minister, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, who acknowledged the important contribution of the Salei’a community, development partners and government agencies working together to address issues of climate change in Samoa.

RNZI reports Labour is also calling for the government to take a humanitarian approach to people from the region who are overstayers in New Zealand.

United Nations warns if sea level rise continues at the current rate, the Pacific atolls of Kiribati and Tuvalu could be completely submerged within decades.

Terry Edwards has lived on Kiribati's main atoll of Tarawa his entire life.

The people there feared for the future, he said.

"We are so afraid and we think about Kiribati, Kiribati maybe in future is going to sink, we worry about it."

The Grant was officially signed this morning with Ambassador Mark Gilbert calling the event a pivotal chance to enhance the communities’ efforts in fighting the biggest challenge yet in the Pacific and the world.

"I am pleased to be here today as we launch a new partnership that will support our shared goal of exploring innovative solutions to address the negative impacts of climate change," he said.

A Scholar for the Islands Society, Genevieve Neilson, said climate change funding for Pacific countries is improving with the US contributing $US500 million to the Green Climate Fund, and new programmes starting in the region.

But she said Pacific states would like greater opportunity to make decisions about how the money was spent.

"If it's being decided in a boardroom somewhere which programmes are being run or how programmes are going to be run or funded then that can really take away from the closer needs of the community."

The ITC is the joint agency of the United Nations and the World Trade Organisation and advises and trains producers on how to reach international markets.

Following a visit to Fiji, Arancha Gonzalez identified climate change as being the biggest challenge to Pacific farmers being able to access international markets.

“Together, we’ve shown what’s possible when the world stands as one,” he said. “We met the moment.”

While he saw the agreement as a global achievement, he emphasised what had been accomplished by America since he entered the White House.