There's a strong link between climate change and disaster risk.
It's an issue being discussed at the first Joint Meeting of the Pacific Platform for Disaster Risk Management and Pacific Climate Change Roundtable in Fiji this week.
Loti Yates is the director of the National Disaster Management Office in Solomon Islands.
So how does climate change adaptation relate to disaster management?
Presenter: Geraldine Coutts
Speaker: Loti Yates, director of the National Disaster Management Office, Solomon Islands
YATES: For us it is clear that disaster reduction and climate change adaptation are closely linked and in many cases, as it is now happening in our region. They result in the same actions on ground addressing same challenges for communities.
So when you look at climate change, in the context of risk, you would then come up with the how to deal with it in the same way as you deal with any other risks, whether they be geological or hydro-meteorological so as far as the the DRM [Disaster Risk Management] community is concerned, we see that they are very closely linked and so would result in the same actions taken on ground and we will come up with the same challenges, given the challenges we are used to face in the Pacific.
COUTTS: Can you give me a practical example of how climate change and disaster risk are linked in Solomon Islands?
YATES: Yeah, when you look at, for example, food security for example. We have an increasing and frequent sea of extreme weather events are happening. They impact on peoples livelihood, food security etc. You could say this is a result of the ever-changing climate. You could also say that this is and because of that you are experiencing a risk towards food shortage. So you can look at the link between the two the fact that the climate situation, there is actually climate change happening, especially, say, for example, we put this in the context of a low lying islands of Ontong Java, you don't see this much happening. Recently, we've been having inundation of taro plantations within the communities of Ontong Java, in the Solomon Islands.
Looking at the changes that are happening, you could say that this the impact of climate change, and therefore it's impacting on peoples' ability to be able to feed themselves or with this making it a little bit harder for people to gather food, especially when island states, island communities like that, they rely mostly on these root crops that could grow well in their conditions and therefore to avoid that, the action taken would be to look at diversifying what sort of crops you put in there, maybe introducing crops that are more tolerant to salt or that sort of thing, so that would be the sort of action that you take to counter that impact or you would increase economic activities, maybe more into using your marine resources and therefore you're able to cope if one component of the community livelihood is affected. You could have an alternate that you fall back to etc. So this should be some of the solutions to this and this is where integrating the area and climate change adaptation is important.
COUTTS: Water is an important part of food security and Ontong Java, has the water, the lenses, being infiltrated by salt water there yet?
YATES: Yes, they're having difficulties there as well, so some of the activities that are actually being undertaken there includes improvement of rainwater harvesting etc. So yeah, it does impact on them as well.
COUTTS: We're talking about rearguard actions here quite a bit - so how do you mitigate climate change as we've been discussing before it gets to the need of disaster risk management?
YATES: For us in the DRM Community, the Disaster Risk Management Community, there are certain means that you could do that. The mitigation component of it is something that I do not have much knowledge of, but when it comes to adaptation in our small communities, the base would be to look at means of adapting to the changes and there are several ways that could be done. In the small island communities, that they could result in communities being relocated. But when you look at the processes that you have to go through to relocate communities, it would be very lengthy, very frustrating, because you have to go into all sorts, especially when you are dealing with the sort of land tenure system and the government arrangements that we have in the Solomon Islands.
The fact that adaptation activities must be taken into consideration as an imperative when you look at the challenges that you have go to through when you are attempting to go into the relocation process, that I think would be one of the most important things for us to do really look at means of adaptation etc. Mitigation I think - there are activities within countries working as I know, working with the Ministry of Forestry and other activities that are linked directly to relevant government departments in the Solomon Islands to contribute to ensuring that greenhouse gas emission is limited or stopped or whatever. They do at the relevant government ministry level, however, maybe looking more into adaptation would be one of the best solutions that we can undertake.