Climate change is a significant threat to the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of the people of the Pacific. Vanuatu is considered to be particularly susceptible to the impacts of climate change and is currently ranked the country most a risk to disaster.
The NSDP provides the mandate for climate change action, identifying ‘strengthened resilience and adaptive capacity to climate related, natural and man-made hazards’ as a key policy objective, along with the Vanuatu Climate Change and Disaster Risk Reduction Policy 2016-2030.
%
of the ni-Vanuatu population derive their livelihoods from weather-sensitive industries
The livelihoods and social structure of the ni-Vanuatu people are inextricably linked to the natural environment and its resource base. The Partnership works to mainstream climate change adaptation, mitigation and environmental protection through all Skills Centre activity and our support to training providers.
Over 80 per cent of the population derive their livelihoods from weather-sensitive industries (agriculture, fisheries and tourism), and as such, any changes to weather that lead to extreme weather events, environmental services or availability of natural resources have direct impacts on income, well being and poverty levels.
Climate Change Strategy
The Vanuatu Skills Partnership has developed a Climate Change Strategy for the operations of the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) Skills Centres, which is currently being updated in line with the evolving context.
A key aspect of this strategy is how the Skills Centres, working with their industry and departmental counterparts, mainstream contextualised climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction and mitigation strategies into all relevant training activities across the tourism, creative industries, agribusiness and construction sectors.
Examples of key activities include:
- Pandanus re-planting program, linked with the Creative Industries workstream and for protecting coastal beaches from coastal erosion.
- Ongoing partnership with the Department of Agriculture in supporting farmers to plant climate resilient crops and further development of the seed-bank model.
- Identification of skills training opportunities in climate-related courses.
The Partnership has a long history of stimulating institutional reform within the Government of Vanuatu and we are continuing to work at this institutional level with key partners on climate change and environmental sustainability.
This includes collaborating with the Ministry for Climate Change and organisations such as the Vanuatu Climate Action Network (VCAN), Community Disaster Climate Change Committee (CDCCC), and the Vanuatu Business Resilience Committee (VBRC), to ensure that the skills sector is actively included within climate change planning and policy-making at national and provincial levels.
