The Minister of Climate Change has urged communities throughout Vanuatu to partner with the Government in implementing the Vanuatu Community-based Climate Resilience Project (VCCRP) for a successful outcome.

Minister Ralph Regenvanu made this call during the opening of the VCCRP Inception Workshop in Port Vila yesterday.

The weeklong workshop brings together partners and stakeholders to build a shared understanding of the project objectives, activities, working arrangements and donor requirements before the project begins. Minister Regenvanu said community leaders should be taking lead since it is a community-based climate resilient project.

“If you are affected from the impacts of climate change and disasters, I am encouraging you to support this project and work with the government and other partners to address the issue,” he said.

He also encouraged policy makers in the private sector or Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) to align their priorities with the goals of the project.

According to the minister, VCCRP is the largest community-based locally led climate resilience project in the world, and that it will be implement in other countries if it is successfully implemented in Vanuatu.

VCCRP will support highly vulnerable communities in all Area Councils to increase their resilience to climate variability and change.

“The project will reach 90, 157 direct beneficiaries in 282 communities under 29 Area Councils across all six provinces of Vanuatu, by working directly with communities and indirectly via building governance capacity,” Minister Regenvanu said.

“The project’s adaptation package provides a menu of actions to support households and communities to address key drivers of climate change vulnerability, minimize exposure and sensitivity and build resilience to unavoidable impacts.”

He said the adaptation package includes mainly in agriculture and fisheries, reducing dependence on vulnerable income-generating resources through alternative livelihood options, improving access to critical services and addressing social inequalities that exacerbate climate vulnerability.

“It will also support communities to maintain healthy ecosystems and restore degraded habitats, to fortify food and livelihood security and reduce vulnerability to climate change-driven disasters, to enhance resource management and build adaptive governance systems,” the Minister said.

“VCCRP will work to achieve this goal via activities under three interlinked components: (1) Government, civic, society and communities are strengthened to support local resilience to climate change impacts, including by providing access to climate information and early warnings;

“(2) Scalable, local appropriative actions are implemented to meet community adaptation needs to create climate-resilient, sustainable development pathways

“(3) Institutional adaptive capacity is enhanced by building adaptive governance systems at the local level and enhancing local-provincial national linkages.

“VCCRP additional benefits will be increased social cohesion, economic opportunities, and improved quality of live. It can also help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect biodiversity.”

Development partners such as Green Climate, Vanuatu and Australian Governments and Save the Children Australia are acknowledged for their tremendous financial support towards the project.