Finnish-Pacific Project to Reduce Vulnerability of the Pacific Island Countries' livelihoods to the effects of Climate Change (FINPAC)

The FINPAC Project will be unique in its staged approach, coverage, focus and linkages across its suite of activities linked from NMS at the national level to users at the community levels. The Project will provide NMS with the capacity and tools and accurately provide weather and climate services in a timely manner to support community adaptation planning and disaster risk reduction. Equally, the capacity of the community will be strengthened to use and apply meteorological data and information. 

 

Improved understanding of weather and climate services will improve the general decision making of grassroots communities and policy makers during the life of the Project, but it will provide a forward momentum for the continual and sustained long term improvement of weather and climate services in all participating PICs in addressing dynamic needs of people and sectors adapting to climate change and reducing the risks of extreme events. 

 

Its uniqueness in the existing environment of multitude climate change adaptation and disaster resilience building efforts in the region is in its primary focus on the National Meteorological Services as the core agent for the improvement of weather and climate services and as the link to the community development. While many of other existing regional climate change adaptation Projects in the region focus on specific sectors such as water resource management, food security, coastal infrastructure protection, building codes, the FINPAC Project understands the need to strengthen the core information and services base upon which those sector rely; without understanding meteorological and climatological implications of future climate variability and change, decisions made solely on the impacts of extreme events will lack information and long-term foresight into the avoidance or mitigation of such events repeating. 

 

The staged or phased approach take into considerations the current capacity including absorption capacity and other national activities that NMS and communities are responsible for or involved in thus ensuring that this project also fits into their national action programmes to allow for maximum participation and uptake including in-corporation into their annual business plans. 

 

The FINPAC Project will seek to work with stakeholders (national and community levels) involved in sectors such as food security, and health to understand how weather and climate services can better inform and add value to works already underway to improve upon these in the region. In doing so, the Project hopes to integrate the role of National Meteorological Services within national development efforts such that their contributions are recognized as adding great value, and provides valid avenue to term their effective contribution from a technical standpoint of weather and climate services delivery, into those of core national development concern.