- CONTEXT
The Pacific region features among the most disaster prone regions in the world in terms of recurrence, severity and scope of hazards, with high exposure to cyclones, earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, tidal surges, landslides, flash floods, drought, forest fires, volcano eruptions, as well as epidemics. This is compounded by environmental degradation and climate change.
Lack of economic diversity, remoteness from major trade and commercial sectors and weak governance frameworks are factors which characterize many of the Pacific island nations and exacerbate their vulnerability to disasters. Although with a total population of some 8.5 million spread across the vast area of the Pacific Ocean the number of mortalities and people affected by a disaster can appear rather low in usual disaster statistics, the Pacific countries rank among the highest in the number of casualties and people affected per 100,000.
2. HUMANITARIAN NEEDS
(1) Affected people/potential beneficiaries
While all Pacific Island States have a similar profile in terms of exposure to disaster risk, there is a varying degree of risk and coping capacity. Those who combine highest risk with low coping capacity are Papua-New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. Their human development index figures are also rather low on a world-wide scale.
Although at slightly varying degree the majority of the region's population must be considered at risk given their exposure to a multitude of natural hazards and the low level of human development of most of the Pacific Island states. Despite a good understanding amongst governments of the link between disaster preparedness and impact of disaster government capacity of implementing supporting disaster risk reduction action is weak. Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) efforts made mostly remain at the national level. Lack of resources but also lack of knowledge leaves communities' needs unattended for.
(2) Description of most acute humanitarian needs
There is a general need across the region for disaster risk reduction in order to reduce the impact of disasters when they occur. The process of preparing local communities for disaster by strengthening their resilience can be significantly accelerated by investing in DRR at community level, in parallel to the investments being done at national level. Direct support to communities is relevant to increase disaster awareness, design community disaster, create local disaster response capacity, etc. At the same time it will be important to actively support stakeholders and activities geared to facilitate the link between civil society action directed towards communities with government action designed at national and provincial level.
