Pacific Voices @ COP15: Amena Yauvouli, Secretariat of the Pacific Community

Geoffrey Smith, Fiji TV, Climate Pasifika

Copenhagen, 15 December - The Secretariat of the Pacific Community, SPC has also weighed in on the critical importance of attracting much needed financing for adaptation projects in the region.

Amena Yauvoli of the SPC says while negotiations are slower than expected, they are still confident that donor agencies will understand the need within the Pacific region to keep the momentum going particularly in three countries who are y beneiciaries of a German government funded forestry conservation project.

Transcript
Amena Yauvoli; Secretariat of the Pacific Community
The progress so far has been very slow.  I was in the AOSIS meeting last night and we tried to help to steer back the process so that we can maintain our focus to help our chair which is Grenada come back into full grip of the issues at hand. So for us at SPC we are also working with our partners here, we have some traditional donor partners like GTZ.  I just had a meeting this morning with one of the senior German government officials trying to arrange a meeting with our regional member countries particularly Fiji, Tonga and Vanuatu who are currently benefiting from a program that GTZ is running in these three countries.

That is the kind of partnership levels that we want to encourage and which we want to strengthen and we want to secure additional financial resources as well as helping our donors understand the adaptation initiatives that has been agreed to by our leaders which SPC plays a prominent role and we look towards our donor, our development partners to assist us at the regional level to increase our service to our members so that they are able to address climate change challenges that we are facing, mitigation and adaptation issues.  So thus far we still hoping for the best out of Copenhagen.