FSPI

The Community Disaster Risk Management Programme (Disaster Programme) works with communities to build their resilience to natural disasters by mainstreaming risk reduction into community development.

The programme works to make communities aware of the benefits of investing in risk-sensitive development, which should mitigate the effects of natural disasters when they strike.

The programme also works to ensure communities are able to cope during a natural disaster and recover quickly once it has passed. Such community-based training and assistance for disaster preparedness and risk-reduction is particularly pertinent to activities for poverty alleviation since it works to ensure that communities do not become entrapped in a cycle of loss, destruction and rebuilding which prevents them from lifting themselves out of poverty. This is the backdrop against which the FSPI's Community Disaster Risk Management Programme works.

In the recent past the Solomon Islands has been struck by a massive tsunami, there have been floods in PNG and cyclones and flooding have ravaged Fiji. The effect of climate change and sea-level rise has touched the lives of islanders in Tuvalu and Kiribati, as well as in other island-states. The severity and frequency of disasters due to climate change has added a new dimension to the discussions and the approach to disaster management activities in the Pacific Island region.

The countries of participating FSPI members – PNG, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Tuvalu and Kiribati – all face threats of natural disasters including volcanic eruptions, droughts, tsunamis, earthquakes, cyclones, floods and erosion caused by the sea.

The effects of natural disasters in the Pacific are often exacerbated by unsound development, especially poor agricultural practices, failure to follow building codes, the lack of a disaster plan, poor communications systems and the lack of a disaster early-warning system.

FSPI's Community Disaster Risk Management Programme works with Network Partners in these countries of the Pacific Island region to help communities, not only to be able to cope during and after a disaster, but to build an ingrained attitude toward development and lifestyle that should soften the impacts of any natural disaster that may strike.