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Asian Development Bank member fact sheet. ADB assistance to Samoa supports improvements in the delivery of basic social services, and provision of safer and more efficient road and maritime transportation, better internet connectivity, and effective disaster relief.

Economic growth and investment in infrastructure go hand in hand. A growing economy needs constantly improved infrastructure to ensure that the production and exchange of goods and services happens as smoothly and efficiently as possible

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development places gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls at the heart of its implementation with its promise to “leave no one behind”.

A rapidly growing population, poor human development indicators, and climate change risk exposure demand a public investment policy that is effective so as to ensure the sustainable growth and development of the Solomon Islands

This handbook serves as a guide to the applications, technologies, business models, and regulations that should be considered when evaluating the feasibility of a battery energy storage system (BESS) project.

The Asia and Pacific region is extremely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Unabated warming could significantly undo previous achievements of economic development and improvements of living standards. At the same time, the region has both the economic capacity and weight of influence to change the present fossil-fuel based development pathway and curb global emissions. This report sheds light on the regional implications of the latest projections of changes in climate conditions over Asia and the Pacific. The assessment concludes that, even under the Paris consensus scenario in which global warming is limited to 1.5°C to 2°C above preindustrial levels, some of the land area, ecosystems, and socioeconomic sectors will be significantly affected by climate change impacts, to which policy makers and the investment community need to adapt to. However, under a Business-As-Usual (BAU) scenario, which will cause a global mean temperature rise of over 4°C by the end of this century, the possibilities for adaptation are drastically reduced. Among others, climate change impacts such as the deterioration of the Asian “water towers”, prolonged heat waves, coastal sea-level rise and changes in rainfall patterns could disrupt ecosystem services and lead to severe effects on livelihoods which in turn would affect human health, migration dynamics and the potential for conflicts. This assessment also underlines that, for many areas vital to the region’s economy, research on the effects of climate change is still lacking.

Although conservation planning research has influenced conservation actions globally in the last two decades, successful implementation of systematic conservation plans in regions where customary marine tenure exists has been minimal. In such regions, local community knowledge and understanding of socioeconomic realities may offer the best spatially explicit information for analysis, since required socioeconomic data are not available at scales relevant to conservation planning. Here we describe the process undertaken by the Kadavu Yaubula Management Support Team, a team of researchers from The University of the South Pacific and the local communities to assess whether systematic conservation planning tools can be effectively applied and useful in a customary governance context, using a case study from Fiji. Through a participatory approach and with the aim of meeting local-scale conservation and fisheries needs, a spatial conservation planning tool, Marxan with Zones, was used to reconfigure a collection of locally designed marine protected areas in the province of Kadavu in order to achieve broader objectives. At the local scale, the real value of such tools has been in the process of identifying and conceptualising management issues, working with communities to collate data through participatory techniques, and in engaging communities in management decision making. The output and use of the tool has been of secondary value. The outcome was invaluable for developing marine protected area network design approaches that combine traditional knowledge with ecological features in a manner appropriate to a Melanesian context.

This document is a step-by-step guide to facilitating a one-day workshop on understanding climate change science and is targeted at audiences in the Pacific island region and Timor-Leste. The training module provides PowerPoint presentations with facilitator notes and explains participatory exercises aimed at enhancing capacity in understanding climate change science.

Pacific Climate Futures Version 2.0 is a web-based climate impacts decision-support tool available for free.

Tropical cyclones (TCs) affect many Pacific Island countries and their impacts can be sever in vulnerable island communities. An understanding of how tropical cyclones may change under future climates, including changes in windspeeds and associated rainfall, is essential for managing future climate risks and saving lives.