14 Apr 2011

Pacific countries to meet to discuss access to climate funds

9:24 am on 14 April 2011

Senior government officials from 10 Pacific countries are meeting in Palau today to discuss improving their access to and use of climate funds.

The two-day workshop in Koror is being organised by the United Nations Development Programme and attended by officials from Fiji, Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Palau, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.

The UNDP's Toily Kurbanov, says he hopes there'll be robust discussion about the management of climate funds over the past few years.

"They ultimately have to improve their public expenditure, public financial assistance in order to be able to tap into the climate funds in a much more streamlined fashion. Second is that there has to be a system of stronger co-ordination between the central ministries and the line ministries. There's evidence coming out of the Caribbean and other parts of the world that in places where there is stronger co-ordination between the central ministries and the line ministries there's a stronger likelihood that climate funds will trickle down to the community level."

The UNDP's resident representative for the South Pacific, Toily Kurbanov.