Enhancing the resilience of tourism-reliant communities to climate change risks

E-Travel Blackboard: On Wednesday, 29th May 2013, the Honorable Prime Minister, the Ministries of Finance, and Natural Resources and Environment together with the United Nations Development Programme in Samoa held a joint event to sign the project “Enhancing the resilience of tourism-reliant communities to Climate Change risks”.

The programme is funded through the Global Environment Facility with a total of US$ 1.950.000 and implemented through the Samoa Tourism Authority with its partner stakeholders in close collaboration with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment who is the Operational Focal Point for the Global Environment Facility and administered by the United Nations Development Programme Multi-Country Office of Samoa. Furthermore, this project will be implemented with all relevant partner stakeholders as well as Samoa’s bi-lateral development partners which will be providing co – financing.

The main objective of the project is to increase the resilience of the tourism sector of Samoa through mainstreaming climate change risks into tourism-related policy processes and adaptation actions in coastal communities and tourism operations.

The communites have critical concerns about the effects of climate change which range from fluctuating food production, impacts of drought, coastal erosion, coastal and river flooding as well as water quality and availability, more vector-borne and water-borne diseases, higher risk of forest fires, damage to low-lying infrastructure, and land loss....

A meeting house on Manono Island, Samoa, shot by Sonja Pieper, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license