Transcript
SARAH HEMSTOCK: It involves professionalisation and recognition of resilience as a employment sector. Because if you think of lots of the Pacific islands many people in government and in NGOs that are employed in either climate change or disaster risk reduction there is not many technical vocational qualifications in those areas. So we have developed technical, vocational qualifications in the area of resilience and we are setting up this Pacific regional federation for resilience professionals.
KOROI HAWKINS: So it is an academic body, an oversight committee? What is it?
SH: It is an industry advisory basically an industry advisory association.
KH: You have got several Pacific Islands education ministers there. (For the launch in Fiji on Wed the 26/10/2016) This is obviously a very important thing for the Pacific in particular.
SH: Yes it is, it is incredibly important because a lot of the, because there is no formal qualifications or no professional recognition of previous training that has happened in the Pacific. When for example cyclone Pam hit Vanuatu the response was delayed by waiting for people to go out and do Post-Disaster Assessments when there are actually trained people in the communities but their qualifications are not recognised. So we are trying to kind of provide a Pacific solution for actually recognising prior learning.
KH: So the qualification is, what you are wanting to see is like having people on the ground in the communities ready to assist with disaster authorities right?
SH: Yeah and also when projects are happening in the region there has been a lot of non formal training around the area of climate change adaptation. So for example something as simple as making drinking water using plastic bottles or installing water tanks for rain water collection, these are all competency based skills that are required, so by recognising those we are actually giving some people a formal qualification that they wouldn't actually have access to.
KH: Is it also about mapping and having a database of who is out there and available for disasters?
SH: Yes so we will keep a database of qualified professionals and what they are qualified to do, so and we will do that across the region. So it is a European Union funded project and it is part of the European Union Pacific technical vocational education project on sustainable energy and climate change adaptation and that is a $EURO 6.1 million project that is working in 15 different countries across the region.
KH: Now if I were to put this all into a nutshell and say what the impact will be for the Pacific what would that be? What would be the biggest impact this will have?
SH: I would, professionalisation of this as a sector so that disaster response and things like that can be much quicker. And also if we are looking at the worst case scenarios with climate change we are looking at there will be impacts on migration. So people within communities can get a qualification. I would say they are the two biggest impacts it is actual building capacity. I mean everybody gets somewhere because they have had an education basically so it is building capacity in that way. And also offering Pacific solutions for Pacific problems.