19th May, 2016 Members of the Small Island States Resilience Initiative (SISRI) Forum convened in Venice, Italy for the fourth biennial Understanding Risk global forum for five days starting on Monday 16th until the 20th of May 2016.
This year’s Forum, Building evidence for action, convened attendees from all over the world including Tonga, with interest, either professionally or personally, in the field of disaster risk identification and climate change adaptation. The Small Island States Resilience Initiative Forum 2016 brought together representatives from government agencies, multilateral organizations, the private sector, non-governmental organizations, research institutions, academia, community-based organizations, civil society, and the greater community.
The Small Island States Resilience Initiatives will facilitate discussions on experiences from Disaster Risk Management and climate resilience and ways to help reduce fragmentation of the financial landscape, provide technical assistance to overcome capacity challenges in fiduciary and technical aspects of investments, and assist Small Island States in accessing scaled up and more efficient financing for resilience.
Tonga delivered a presentation on Building Resilience in vulnerable communities with a particular focus on building resilience of school children through providing them with ‘Safer Schools’. Natural disasters often damage and destroy school infrastructure, threatening educational opportunities and risking the lives of school children especially in the outer islands of Tonga. The Government of Tonga through NEMO in collaboration with Ministry of Education and other related stakeholders aims to make school facilities and the communities they serve more resilient to natural hazards. Some of the works in Tonga aims to reduce the physical impact of disasters on school infrastructure and minimize the negative educational outcomes that result from disasters.
Tonga was represented at this meeting by two officials from MEIDECC – the Director of the National Emergency Management Office, Mr. Leveni ‘Aho and Principal Policy Analyst, Department of Climate Change, Ms. ‘Ofa Ma’asi-Kaisamy. The meeting will close later in the week.
ENDS
Issued from the Ministry of Meteorology, Energy, Information, Disaster Management, Environment, Climate Change and Communications