The Pacific has welcomed the announcement from New Zealand of their NZD20 million investment in the Weather Ready Pacific Program. The WRP is a decadal response to enable Pacific Islands to better anticipate, and respond to, high impact and extreme weather events.
This follows the recent endorsement of Pacific Leaders at the 52nd Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting of the Pacific Partnerships for Prosperity in which Mobilising resources for the Weather Ready Pacific Decadal Programme of Investment was featured. Through the PPFP, Partners were encouraged to make funding announcements to the WRP.
The contribution from New Zealand further strengthen the AUD 30-million-dollar commitment announcement in 2023, to support the Weather Ready Pacific.
“This significant investment in the Weather Ready Pacific demonstrates New Zealand’s commitment for our Pacific progress, resilience and survival. Our Pacific Meteorological Directors are extremely grateful and appreciative of the support from both Australia and New Zealand to catalyse the WRP and see it take shape,” said Mr Ofa Fa’anunu, Director of the Tonga Meteorological Service.
“We are all proud of this major achievement, the Weather Ready Pacific is the first such initiative that has been driven by us as Pacific Met Directors. We have built this around our experiences, lessons learnt, gaps, knowledge of our Pacific island’s communities, and science – under a collective vision of Pacific Islands survival. With this additional support from New Zealand, we have no doubt the Weather Ready Pacific will be a success.”
The Pacific Islands region remains vulnerable to the wide scope of risks for which Pacific Meteorological Services play a key role in building the preparedness and resilience of our Pacific Islands communities.
Past experiences for Pacific Islands people are testament to the need for a strong Met Service to build our Pacific up in the face of these risks.
Economic losses from cyclones and flooding in the South Pacific region in 2020 were around USD 1 Billion with at least 71 lives lost, more recent estimates put the average annual loss in GDP in the South Pacific for a natural disaster to be around 14.4% with a 34% likelihood of a natural disaster occurring in any year. Tropical Cyclone Winston in 2016 affected over half of Fiji’s population resulting in USD 900 M in losses whilst Tropical Cyclone Pam in 2015 reduced Vanuatu’s GDFP by 60%.
Strengthening the abilities of our Pacific Met services and their capabilities across the Pacific through the Weather Ready Pacific Program of Investment will have a positive impact for our Pacific Islands families.
“We are grateful to New Zealand for its strong support to Weather Ready Pacific. This is a wonderful new modality for a programmatic approach to climate financing determined and driven by those asking for the support. It is important we do so we can replicate this approach,” said Mr Sefanaia Nawadra, Director General of the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).
As the Secretariat of the Pacific Met Desk Partnership and the Pacific Met Council, SPREP stands proud to support the Weather Ready Pacific from inception to full implementation.
“I congratulate the PMC and all the supporting partners especially Australia and NZ. Hard but exciting work now lies ahead of us. I pledge that all of SPREP will be working with you to make this the success our region needs.”
Now in its inception phase, the Weather Ready Pacific Decadal Programme of Investment was endorsed in 2021 by Pacific Islands Leaders to reduce the human and economic costs of severe weather, water and ocean events across Pacific Island communities, by strengthening national meteorological and hydrological organisations and their partnerships with national disaster management organisations.
This programme of investment (USD 167 million over 10 years) ensures that the Pacific participates in and benefits from advances in forecast and warning systems that should ultimately enable increased accuracy, geographic specificity and lead time of forecasts.
