A toolkit to help Solomon Islands, one of the most prone countries in the Pacific to disaster to factor risk into its planning and development.
Transcript
The Solomon Islands is one of the most vulnerable countries in the Pacific to disasters, climate change and the environment
To help combat this, a Risk Resilient Development Toolkit is being developed to help decision-makers factor risk into their planning.
The Solomons' government combined with agencies such as the United Nations Development Programme's Pacific Risk Resilience Programme, to develop the tool kit.
An officer with the programme, Adi Galokepoto, told Don Wiseman about the kit.
ADI GALOKEPOTO: It's like a checklist where they go through and they tick it. What are the impacts of the project on the environment? What are the impacts of climate change on the project and what are the possible risks, disaster risks that this project can be exposed to? The purpose behind screening all these projects is to ensure that we reduce future impacts of climate change or disaster risk on whatever developments that the government is trying to implement.
DON WISEMAN: So it's about capacity building. How specific does it get in terms of say the environmental risk of a project? Down to what level are you looking at things?
AG: Risk in terms of pollutants that the project might generate which might create an impact on the environment in terms of level of damage and also the level of damage on the soil or on the vegetation, something like that. So that's how the toolkit is being developed to actually capture some of these impacts that the project might have on the environment.
DW: If we look at climate change give me some of the specifics that it might raise.
AG: Let's take as an example here a water project. If we were to implement a water project at the community level, it comes out of the development budget for the ministry of health, then they might look into (whether) it is in a safer location. Is it away from the sea where the levle of exposure is really high especially during tsunami, during high sea level rise? It might also affect the water source. It's about communities making informed decisions on where they are going to place the project, whether they're going to look for a better water source that is not salinated and a water source that can be able to provide fresh water. So it's all about making sure that some of this climate change impact is taking into consideration and to ensure this project reaches and achieves its full maximum of what it's supposed to be giving benefits to the community.
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