Advocacy for Disaster Risk Management: Pacific Islands

Transcription

1 9 Advocacy for Disaster Risk Management: Pacific Islands GENERAL INFORMATION Implementing Institution: South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC), now the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission. Head: Ms. Christelle Pratt (Director) Details of Institution: Address: Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC), Private Mail Bag, GPO, Suva, Fiji Tel.: (+679) Fax: (+679) Website: Implementation Period: The initiative began in 2002 and is ongoing. Costs: As of September 2005, the project had cost some US$114,900, of which US$47,100 were received from a number of international, regional, bilateral and national donor sources and US$67,800 were provided for specific in-country High Level Advocacy Team (HLAT) activities by the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) and Emergency Management Australia (EMA), an agency of the Government of Australia. 127

2 128 VOLUME 12: EXAMPLES OF NATURAL DISASTER MITIGATION IN SMALL ISLAND DEVELOPING STATES S U M M A R Y Prior to 2000, disaster management activities in the Pacific region were mainly sponsored by large international agencies and were typically focused on disaster preparedness, response and immediate postdisaster relief. In 1996, the Pacific Leaders Forum decided to place responsibility for the coordination of such activities with the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) (now the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission). A report commissioned for SOPAC in 2000 recommended the establishment of a disaster management unit (DMU) and the application of risk management principles and practices for disaster risk reduction and disaster management. A disaster risk management (comprising disaster risk reduction and disaster management) tool, designated Comprehensive Hazard and Risk Management (CHARM), was developed and piloted and is now being applied in many of the 16 small island developing States (SIDS) in the Pacific. It soon became obvious, however, that SIDS were failing to institutionalize the new disaster risk management principles and practices at the national level and that the developing disaster risk management programmes were not being appropriately integrated and coordinated with sustainable development, poverty alleviation and environmental management policies and programmes. Accordingly, in 2002, SOPAC established a high-level advocacy team (HLAT) with the objective of obtaining the highest level of national commitment to, and support for, the integration of disaster risk management strategies into national development policies and plans. The HLAT consults and advocates with relevant in-country leaders, senior bureaucrats and other stakeholders (including donor representatives) on the introduction and implementation of comprehensive and integrated risk management policies and programmes designed to reduce vulnerability, enhance community resilience and assist in achieving sustainable development. During 2004, the HLAT also participated in the development of a Pacific regional paper for the January 2005 World Conference on Disaster Reduction. Following this conference and its output document, Hyogo Framework for Action : Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters, the HLAT also facilitated the process of developing the counterpart Pacific regional framework, An Investment for Sustainable Development in Pacific Island Countries: Disaster Risk Reduction and Disaster Management: Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters: A Framework for Action The establishment and work of the SOPAC HLAT constitute a major regional innovation in assisting in the implementation of national disaster risk reduction and disaster-management programmes. The team has also developed a new concept that integrates disaster risk reduction with disaster management.

3 Advocacy for Disaster Risk Management: Pacific Islands 129 With the endorsement of the new Pacific regional framework by the Pacific Leaders Forum at its meeting in Madang, Papua New Guinea, in October 2005, the work of the team will enter a new phase. B A C K G R O U N D A N D J U S T I F I C AT I O N T H E I N I T I A L S I T U AT I O N In recognition of the regional need to reduce the impact of disasters and in the interest of promoting sustainable development, the Pacific Leaders Forum adopted a vision statement at its meeting in Madang, Papua New Guinea, in 1995: Vulnerability to the effects of natural hazards, environmental damage and other threats will be overcome. The vulnerability of SIDS, such as those in the Pacific Ocean, to natural hazards is well documented. Their capacity to reduce this vulnerability is affected by a number of factors, including political will, problems with policy coordination, the relatively low capability of the public sector and a limited resource base. In addition, the tools available to such States to assist them in reducing this vulnerability have largely been the outcomes of studies undertaken in the 1980s and 1990s under the auspices of such regional agencies as the Asian Development Bank (AsDB) and the Pacific Islands Development Programme, with their emphasis on structural disaster mitigation and non-structural disaster preparedness programmes. As a result, disaster reduction activities in the Pacific have generally followed the traditional approach in focusing primarily on natural hazards and on developing capacity for preparedness and response to events. This was the approach of early internationally sponsored disaster management programmes, which assisted many of these States in developing national legislation and national and local disaster management plans and which supported the establishment of national disaster management offices (NDMOs) as key agencies. However, these activities have generally gained only limited support from national governments and donor organizations, while the agencies themselves often have insufficient resources and are unable to secure inter-agency support. In many cases, the resulting disaster management plans themselves were the product of inadequate inter-agency consultation and were under-resourced and rarely exercised or reviewed. There have been a number of instances in which existing disaster management arrangements and plans have proved to be inadequate in practice, to have been ineffectively applied or to have simply been ignored in Government and community responses to disaster events. The effectiveness of many of the NDMOs in this role also tended to be limited by their lack of political prominence and inter-agency contact. Allocation to an inappropriate ministerial portfolio, inadequate and junior-level staffing and prior ineffective performance were often among the factors that con-

4 130 VOLUME 12: EXAMPLES OF NATURAL DISASTER MITIGATION IN SMALL ISLAND DEVELOPING STATES tributed to this lack of effectiveness. This resulted in the NDMOs often being excluded from the mainstream decisionmaking process and working in isolation (the silo phenomenon, not unknown elsewhere in respect to specialist disaster management agencies). It had become apparent that continuing with this bottom-up in-country approach to introducing new practices and processes, and hoping to influence senior decision-makers through an advocacy function using the same arrangements would not achieve the desired programme outcomes. While a report on regional activities during the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction, , suggested that In all respects, there has been a significant and purposeful shift from disaster response, relief and rehabilitation that is, the post-disaster phase towards planning, mitigation and disaster reduction in the pre-disaster phase, the same report highlighted heightened vulnerability to natural disasters in many Pacific Island countries. In consequence, levels of community vulnerability in many countries of the region did not decrease significantly during the Decade. Clearly, a new approach was needed if the vision of the Pacific Leaders Forum was to be achieved. A N E W A P P R O A C H In 1996, the South Pacific Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) (now the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission) accepted the responsibility for regional disaster management activities on behalf of the Pacific Leaders Forum. This responsibility was effectively transferred to SOPAC from other regional agencies in SOPAC itself was established in 1972 as a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) regional project for the assessment of deep-sea minerals and hydrocarbon deposits in the Pacific. It is now a major intergovernmental regional organization with a membership of 16 island States and territories (plus Australia and New Zealand) dedicated to providing geological services to promote sustainable development in the region. It is a member of the Council of Regional Organisations in the Pacific (CROP) and, in recent years, its mandate has been extended to include coastal protection and management, water, sanitation and energy. The SOPAC Governing Council includes high-level national representation, often at the ministerial or departmental head level. This feature of the governance of SOPAC has proved to have important benefits for the advocacy programme. As a result of a study commissioned by SOPAC and published in 2000, a small disaster management unit (DMU) was established within SOPAC. The SOPAC study identified a need to replace the conventional disaster management model, with its focus on response and recovery, with a more holistic approach, wherein the processes of hazard identification and mitigation, community preparedness, integrated response effort, and recovery are planned for and undertaken contiguously within a risk management context.

5 Advocacy for Disaster Risk Management: Pacific Islands 131 The risk management context referred to in the document derived from work that had been undertaken in Australia, at the request of the then National Emergency Management Committee, to adapt a recently adopted national risk management standard (Australia/New Zealand Standard AS/NZS 4360:1995 Risk Management) to emergency and disaster management requirements. The DMU of SOPAC undertook the development of a draft disaster management manual based on the risk management approach, which was then piloted during inter-agency workshops in Kiribati, Tonga and Vanuatu organized by NDMOs and facilitated by the DMU. The manual was subsequently published by SOPAC as Regional Comprehensive Hazard and Risk Management (CHARM) Guidelines for Pacific Island Countries in CHARM has now been endorsed by a number of national governments in the region and is being progressively adopted and applied in the remainder, with workshops and other assistance being provided by SOPAC and donor agencies. O P T I M I Z I N G E F F E C T I V E N E S S The SOPAC study recommended that the DMU undertake advocacy functions to promote the benefits of risk management within national development strategies. In February 2001, a regional workshop was held in Fiji to develop a strategy for implementing the recommendation. Subsequent in-country CHARM workshops have contained an advocacy element involving high-level briefings and discussions with ministers and senior officials. However, experience with the model for the new CHARM risk management process was revealing some inadequacies in the model itself. The standard on which the model had been based was designed primarily for use by single organizations in managing risks specific to these organizations (the context). In adapting the model for the basic AS/NZS 4360 risk management process, little emphasis was given to the full implications of the multi-organizational, multiple-risk context of the disaster management task, in particular, the resultant needs for high-level political direction and for extensive inter-agency consultation and coordination. In addition, there proved to be a difficulty with the risk treatments promoted in CHARM, which tended to emphasize the 20-year-old linear paradigm of prevention/mitigation, preparedness, response, recovery (PPRR) as the primary treatments for disaster risk. This approach tends to de-emphasize the importance of the AS/NZS 4360 Standard s risk treatment options of risk avoidance, reducing likelihood, reducing consequence, risk transfer and risk retention. (Risk retention involves planning and preparedness for treating residual risk.) The PPRR approach also seemed to some to imply a claim for ownership of the national risk management process by disaster managers. It became evident to SOPAC, therefore, that while disaster management specialists needed to provide input into all the steps in the sustainable-development risk management process, their

6 132 VOLUME 12: EXAMPLES OF NATURAL DISASTER MITIGATION IN SMALL ISLAND DEVELOPING STATES primary responsibility lay in the area of risk retention treatments, i.e., planning and preparedness for the management of those residual risks that were not amenable to appropriate treatment through other options. However, these two problems the first concerned primarily with delivery mechanisms for the DMU programme, the second with a perceived fault in the programme s process model fed into but were rapidly overtaken by a more fundamental problem: the broader relationship between the DMU programme and other regional and national programmes. The origin of the DMU organization and programme lay in the original 2000 SOPAC Risk Management, Institutional Strengthening and Capacity-building study, the primary goal of which was to strengthen national disaster management programming capacities. The study recognized NDMOs as the primary institutions that required strengthening and capacity-building, and disaster management programming was construed largely in terms of the traditional PPRR paradigm. As the CHARM programme rolled out in , however, concerns were raised over the validity of some of the assumptions and directions of the SOPAC study. In particular, the CHARM workshops highlighted the fact that the responsibility for risk management in the whole range of risks that bear on sustainable development lies beyond the remit of NDMOs and even of the ministries to which such offices are assigned. During the same period, SOPAC itself had been asked by the Pacific Leaders Forum to develop regional strategies in areas such as sustainable development, poverty alleviation and environmental management, and such strategies have been progressively published. Inevitably, there is considerable overlap between the risk management goals of such regional strategies when applied at the national level and the national disaster risk reduction/disaster management goals of the DMU programme. In a climate in which risk management was being seen increasingly as an integral part of good management practice over a wide range of national policies, strategies and programmes, the DMU programme was itself in danger of becoming a silo. H I G H-LEVEL A D V O C A C Y G R O U P Many of these problems were identified in the course of a CHARM stakeholder workshop held in June 2001 in Tonga, and later that year, a planning workshop was held in Fiji to review the existing programme and its advocacy component. The original SOPAC 2000 study proposed the implementation of a three-year regional advocacy strategy to promote the benefits of risk management among politicians, policy-makers and non-traditional donor agencies. This workshop resulted in the establishment of the High-level Advocacy Working Group to assist in achieving this goal. The Fiji workshop suggested a number of

7 Advocacy for Disaster Risk Management: Pacific Islands 133 specific activities that could be undertaken under a specific advocacy programme with the following goal and objective: goal: the adoption by national governments of a comprehensive and integrated risk management policy designed to reduce vulnerability, enhance community resilience and achieve sustainable development; objective: to obtain the highest level of national commitment to, and support for, the integration of disaster-reduction and response strategies into national development policies and plans. The workshop led to the appointment of the High Level Advocacy Team (HLAT) composed of three experts and to an outline programme of the team s activities in the first half of Subsequent six-month meetings have reviewed the activities and methodologies of the HLAT and determined its future activities. Drawing on the experiences of early HLAT visits to Fiji and Samoa and of visits by individual HLAT members to a number of other Pacific Island countries, a November 2002 review formalized the working practice of the HLAT, as described below. HLAT first contacts the SOPAC national representatives and heads of departments responsible for disaster management in the country concerned in order to make appropriate arrangements. This is followed by a four-to-five-day visit by the three-person team (fig. 1) that includes: a courtesy call on the minister responsible for disaster management; a high-level briefing of key ministers (including those with responsibility for sustainable development, economic development and finance) and heads of departments on the need for the establishment of comprehensive and integrated risk management policies linking disaster management with sustainable development, poverty alleviation and environmental management and on the value of CHARM in facilitating the development of such policies and in ensuring their effective implementation; a more general briefing and workshop session with senior D E S C R I P T I O N The HLAT visits two or three countries in each six-month period (plus return visits or visits to special projects). When planning a new high-level visit to a nation State, the Figure 1 Members of the SOPAC High Level Advocacy Team with the Prime Minister of Fiji and the minister responsible for disaster management, Fiji, 2004.

8 134 VOLUME 12: EXAMPLES OF NATURAL DISASTER MITIGATION IN SMALL ISLAND DEVELOPING STATES representatives of relevant governmental and non-governmental agencies and stakeholders, including such topics as the need for the application of risk management processes to national planning and development projects and linkages with disaster risk reduction and disaster management; calls on appropriate donor-agency and consular representatives to explain the process and gain support for the programme; an exit call on the prime minister in which the outcomes of the visit are summarized and an offer for further support is made, contingent upon the establishment of national policies embracing a comprehensive, integrated approach to risk management. Such support can include funding for specific activities and processes, further HLAT visits and activities, and CHARM or public-safety and riskmanagement workshops funded and arranged by SOPAC; and a final briefing and discussions with the relevant minister and head of department. R E V I S I N G T H E M O D E L F O R T H E D I S A S T E R R I S K M A N A G E M E N T P R O C E S S As explained earlier, experience with the original model for the CHARM risk management process had demonstrated some inadequacies in the model itself. In developing the new advocacy approach, it was found that it was necessary to revisit the CHARM model that was based on the AS/NZS 4360 model of the risk management process with its emphasis on the PPRR paradigm as the primary treatment for disaster risk. As agreed by participants at the second World Conference on Disaster Reduction, held in Hyogo, Japan, in January 2005, priorities for action include a reduction of the underlying risk factors and a strengthening of disaster preparedness for an effective response at all levels. These recommendations highlight that there is a pressing need for a comprehensive, integrated risk management framework within which both disaster riskreduction and disaster-management needs can be addressed at the national level. Such a framework is provided in the Disaster Risk Reduction/Disaster Management Process Model (fig. 2), which has been adapted from the AS/ NZS 4360 Risk Management Standard and the model of the CHARM risk management process. This process model is currently used by the HLAT in its incountry discussions, presentations and briefings. The HLAT also emphasizes that the effective implementation of the model requires high-level facilitation, support and participation of all agencies. A P P LY I N G T H E M O D E L I N T H E HLAT P R O C E S S The priority issues that needed to be addressed in the HLAT process were how to provide guidance in dealing with national disaster risk management (disaster risk reduction and disaster management)

9 Advocacy for Disaster Risk Management: Pacific Islands Establish the context 2. Identify risks Figure 2 Overview of the Disaster Risk Reduction/ Disaster Management Process Model (adapted from the AS/NZS 4360 Risk Management Standard). 3. Analyse risks Communicate and consult 4. Evaluate risks Assess risks 5. Accept risks? No Yes Monitor and review 6. Reduce risks (Disaster risk reduction) 7. Manage residual risk (Disaster management)* * a. Develop preparedness and response treatments b. Manage response, immediate relief and recovery requirements and how to bring national disaster risk management into the mainstream sustainable-development decisionmaking processes of the Government. In 2005, the risk management model (fig. 2) was presented in both Tonga (in association with a World Bank project) and the Cook Islands (in association with an AsDB project), providing an appropriate vehicle through which this issue could be addressed while recognizing the realities of the relatively low public-sector capability and limited resource base in such SIDS. Steps 1 to 6 in the model, if undertaken on a fully consultative whole-of-government basis and with appropriate highlevel endorsement of the outcomes of the key steps, result in a holistic approach to the management of risks to sustainable development. In Step 6, those risks with the potential to cause major emergencies or disasters but that cannot be properly addressed through the application of available prevention or mitigation strategies (i.e., residual risks) can be referred to disaster management authorities for the development of appropriate preparedness, response and immediate post-disaster relief planning treatments. The administrative arrangements necessary for the support of this process include the development of appropriate linkages between the national departments or offices responsible for national planning and disaster management, as

10 136 VOLUME 12: EXAMPLES OF NATURAL DISASTER MITIGATION IN SMALL ISLAND DEVELOPING STATES outlined in figure 3. The shaded bar at the bottom of the figure represents the risk management connection between the national risk-reduction and disaster risk-reduction activities referred to in the preceding paragraph. The early work of the HLAT, carried out during 2002 and 2003, involved formal visits to Fiji, Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu. During this period, input from the team into other major reviews and development projects and contacts with a number of other Pacific Island countries were largely exploratory in nature as basic concepts were being developed and the processes by which the team operates were being refined. Recently, however, a number of countries, including Samoa and Tonga, have instituted comprehensive and integrated hazard and risk management programmes with all-agency involvement using the disaster risk reduction/disaster management process model and the suggested steps in development and implementation. Early results from these programmes are encouraging and demonstrate that the use of an appropriate comprehensive and integrated risk management methodology can overcome many of the early obstacles and much of the early resistance encountered in trying to establish an effective national regime for disaster risk management. P A R T N E R S H I P S The work of the HLAT of SOPAC has been dependent upon willing partnerships with a number of aid agencies, in particular, the aid and development agencies of Australia and New Zealand (the Australian Agency for International Development and New Zealand s International Aid and Development Agency), and with Emergency Department/office responsible for national planning Department/office responsible for disaster management National Risk Reduction Committee National Disaster Management Committee Role: National risk reduction Role: Disaster risk reduction Role: Disaster management Figure 3 A generalized national administrative arrangement to support the application of a risk management methodology. The shaded bar at the bottom represents the risk management connection between the national risk-reduction and disaster risk-reduction activities referred to in the text.

11 Advocacy for Disaster Risk Management: Pacific Islands 137 Management Australia. Training activities in support of the HLAT programme have been provided by The Asia Foundation, supported by the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance of the United States Agency for International Development, the staff of which are now co-located with the headquarters of the Community Risk Programme of SOPAC in Suva, Fiji. R E P L I C A B I L I T Y The basic comprehensive and integrated disaster risk reduction/disaster-management model and the HLAT process as implemented by SOPAC in the Pacific region are considered directly relevant to other regions. However, the special circumstances considered to apply in the Pacific region, as outlined in the Impact section and the lessons learned by SOPAC and the HLAT in the course of the innovation initiative need to be taken into account before attempting to replicate the process elsewhere. The effective replication of the Pacific innovation in other regions would also require regional commitment to the model and process and recognition by States of: the need for the integration of disaster risk management (disaster risk reduction and disaster management) policies and arrangements with national policies and arrangements in the areas of sustainable development, poverty alleviation, public safety and environmental protection; and the need for the adoption of a set of implementation arrangements such as those in figure 2 in order to ensure transparency and accountability in the application of the comprehensive and integrated whole-of-government management model. P O L I C Y I M P L I C AT I O N S To date, following the innovative experience of SOPAC, a number of countries in the Pacific have instituted programmes of legislative change and reviews of existing disaster response/relief plans and arrangements. The HLAT is directly involved in facilitating these programmes. I M P A C T A clear indicator of the success of the innovation to date is provided in the draft Pacific regional Framework for Action adopted in early June 2005 at the twelfth Pacific Regional Disaster Management Meeting in Madang, Papua New Guinea (fig. 4). While initiated in the first instance within the Pacific disaster management fraternity, national government representatives from a wide variety of planning and programme departments and agencies contributed to the development of the framework. The framework itself is a direct regional response to the challenges set by the Hyogo Framework for Action endorsed by participants at the second World Conference on Disaster

12 138 VOLUME 12: EXAMPLES OF NATURAL DISASTER MITIGATION IN SMALL ISLAND DEVELOPING STATES Figure 4 Pacific regional and national representatives at the 2005 Madang, Papua New Guinea, conference, who agreed the Framework for Action for disaster risk reduction and disaster management, which was adopted in early June Reduction in January The endorsement of the Madang framework by the SOPAC Governing Council and the Pacific Leaders Forum will provide a basis for the sustainable implementation of a comprehensive and integrated hazard and risk management programme at the national level and a continuation of the regional advocacy and support programmes. The fact that such countries as the Cook Islands, Samoa and Tonga are already instituting comprehensive and integrated hazard and risk management programmes with all-agency involvement using the disaster risk reduction/disaster management process model is also testimony to the impact of the activities of the SOPAC HLAT. L E S S O N S L E A R N E D The primary obstacles that needed to be overcome in developing effective programmes for national disaster risk management in the Pacific were issues of political will, policy coordination, low publicsector capability and a limited resource base. Given the demonstrated inadequacy of the initial attempt to address such issues through the bottom-up introduction of the CHARM risk management process, the establishment of the HLAT was specifically designed to overcome these obstacles. The main lessons learned from HLAT activities to date include: the necessity for pre-visit planning and preparation, particularly high-level pre-visit liaising through national representatives on the relevant regional consultative council; the need to be able to offer specific regional and donor-agency support for national activities resulting from the team s visit, subject to appropriate high-level government endorsement of comprehensive and integrated risk management concepts, principles and practices; and the need for appropriate follow-up with both national governments and those national bodies charged with establishing and implementing the risk management approach.

13 Advocacy for Disaster Risk Management: Pacific Islands 139 F U T U R E P L A N S In February 2006, following the Pacific Leaders endorsement of the Madang Framework for Action and the inclusion of the disaster risk reduction/disaster-management initiative as an immediate priority, SOPAC convened a major regional stakeholder workshop in Fiji to develop a programme for the implementation of the initiative. In addition to representatives of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat and other Council of Regional Organisations in the Pacific (CROP) agencies, workshop participants included regional representatives of UNDP and the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, major nongovernmental agencies and donors. A Pacific Partnership Network Initiative has been prepared to support Pacific Island countries in developing and implementing national action plans for disaster risk reduction and disaster management, with specific targets and time lines for achievement in the period The outcomes of this workshop and of further meetings to be held shortly will determine the future direction and activities of the HLAT. U P D AT E O N P A C I F I C R E G I O N A L D E V E L O P M E N T S As mentioned earlier, a draft Pacific regional Framework for Action was adopted in early June 2005 at the twelfth Pacific Regional Disaster Management Meeting. The Framework was essentially a Pacific version of the global Hyogo Framework for Action that had been agreed at the second World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Kobe, Japan, in January It was the outcome of a strategy and process under development by SOPAC from 2001 and implemented through the Community Risk Programme and the HLAT. In October 2005, Pacific Forum Leaders endorsed the new Framework as the Pacific Regional Disaster Risk Reduction and Disaster Management Framework for Action and the Pacific Plan, which identified the development and implementation of policies and plans for the mitigation and management of natural disasters as a priority initiative for the first three years ( ) of the Plan. SOPAC was charged with the regional responsibility for implementing both the Framework for Action and the related Pacific Plan initiative. In February 2006, the Pacific Disaster Risk Management Partnership Network was established at a SOPAC-sponsored workshop in Fiji. The workshop included representatives of relevant United Nations agencies, other international and regional bodies, major donor countries and non-government aid providers. The Network now comprises over 30 international and regional organizations, including UNDP and the World Bank. The Partnership Network is committed to the provision of regional support for the development and implementation of comprehensive and integrated disaster risk management (disaster risk reduction and disaster management) national action plans.

14 140 VOLUME 12: EXAMPLES OF NATURAL DISASTER MITIGATION IN SMALL ISLAND DEVELOPING STATES Its programme pools the resources and expertise of Network members, seeking to harmonize efforts and reduce duplication. In , the Network is providing support to the Marshall Islands and Vanuatu in the development and implementation of national action plans, and the Network programme will be extended based on lessons learned in this initial phase. Barely twelve months after the Kobe conference, the Pacific region had in place an active programme promoting effective disaster risk management at the national level. It can be regarded as a successful regional initiative promoting best practices for natural disaster mitigation in small island developing States. P U B L I C A T I O N S Risk Management, Standards Association of Australia, (1995). Australia/New Zealand Standard Strathfield, New South Wales, Australia.. (1999). Australia/New Zealand Standard 4360 revised. Strathfield, New South Wales, Australia. SOPAC (2000). Disaster Management Unit: Project Design Document, South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission, Suva, Fiji.. (2002). Regional Comprehensive Hazard and Risk Management (CHARM) Guidelines for Pacific Island Countries, South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission, Suva, Fiji.. (2003). Work Programmes and Strategies, South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC Miscellaneous Report 499), Suva, Fiji.. (2004). Draft Pacific Regional Position Paper for the Second World Conference on Disaster Reduction (SOPAC Miscellaneous Report 578), Suva, Fiji.. (2005). Twelfth Pacific Regional Disaster Management Meeting: Summary Record (SOPAC Miscellaneous Report 601), Suva, Fiji. These and other relevant documents can be downloaded from Case Study Prepared by: Roger T. Jones Address: Director, TEM Consultants Pty. Ltd., P.O. Box 142, Mount Macedon, Victoria 3441, Australia Tel.: (+61) Fax: (+61) temcons@netcon.net.au Project Participants: Members of the SOPAC High Level Advocacy Team include: Langi Kavaliku, team leader: A renowned Pacific statesman, former Deputy Prime Minister of Tonga and Pro-Chancellor of the University of the South Pacific. Alan Mearns: Manager, SOPAC Community Risk Programme. Roger Jones: Disaster risk management consultant.