By Ana Uili of MEIDAC, Tonga
15 August, 2017, Honiara, Solomon Islands, PMC-4 – The head of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) has called on the Pacific to break the barrier of withholding information from one another.
Director General Mr. James Movick made the call while delivering a presentation to the Pacific Meteorological Council (PMC) on the overview of FFA’s observer program.
He said that one of the main challenges in the Pacific region is people are not sharing information.
“Getting everybody to understand that sharing information more broadly is valuable. So that’s part of this process that we’ve been trying to encourage to coordinate frameworks.”
Chair of PMC and Acting Director of Solomon Islands Meteorology service Mr. Lloyd Tahani said sharing information is very essential for the advancement of products.
“Sharing of data especially with regards to climate and weather data is very important, and as the FFA Director General alluded this morning they also found sharing of data to be difficult especially in this part of the world where data is still a political issue.”
He stressed that signing of agreement between countries can help promote the idea of information sharing and revert the benefits gained back to the countries the data comes from.
“Frameworks such as PMC will create more value where collaboration can be made to achieve those approaches, and make it much easier because you would have head of countries coming to discuss and talk about regional needs, and through those process data can be easily shared and used for the betterment of respective Pacific island countries.”
Tahani stated that development partners and donors such as the Climate and Oceans Support Program in the Pacific (COSPPac) from Australia, and Republic of Korea require data sharing to help them develop products that Pacific countries can use in decision making to be resilient against climate change impact. – #PMC4 #PacificMet
The Fourth Pacific Meteorological Council is being held in Honiara, Solomon Islands from the 14 – 17 August co-hosted by the government of Solomon Islands, the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) and World Meteorological Organization (WMO). This will followed by the Second Pacific Meteorological Ministers Meeting (PMMM) on the 18 of August.
The PMC and PMMM is supported by the Government of Solomon Islands, SPREP, WMO, Government of Australia through the Climate and Oceans Support Programme (COSPPac) and Pacific Australia Climate Change Science and Adaptation Planning Programme (PACCSAP), Government of Finland, National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), United Nations Development Programme through the Resilience in the Pacific (SIDS) project.
The PMC consists of members of the Pacific National Meteorological and Hydrological Services supported by its technical partners, regional organisations, non-government organisations and private sectors.
This article was developed by a Pacific Media Team of Reporters currently providing coverage on the Fourth Pacific Meteorological Council in Solomon Islands. This activity coordinated by SPREP is supported by a partnership between the Government of Solomon Islands, SPREP, Australia funded project (Climate and Oceans Support Program (COSPPac) and UNDP Disaster for Pacific SIDS (RESPAC) project.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) or the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)both of which provided funding for generating media articles.