Thursday, August 30, 2012

Kizuna Project


 The Kizuna ( Bonds of Friendship) Project is an iniciative between The University of the South Pacific and  the Government of Japan.  This project goal is to build closer relations amongst the youth of Pacific Islands countries and Japan. The Project will provide fully funded two week study tours to Japan for students at the High School and College level. Some of the activities to be done at the trip will include historical and industrial sites, exchange program with schools and volunteer in a community affected by the 2011 earthquake. Fourteen countries fron Oceania will be part of this iniciative. These are Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Is., Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Is., Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and the FSM.  Twenty two students from the FSM were selected to participate, nine of them from Kosrae, twelve from Pohnpei and one from Chuuk. The travel schedule for the FSM studends will be from Spetember 15 until
October 1st.

                                  
                                         Simpson meets with the students and their parents.

Malem Village CC Vulnerability Meeting

On August 20, PACC project was invited by the local environmental NGO, KCSO; to meet with Malem village elders to discuss the vulnerability of  the coast and the upland forest to climate change. Participants included the mayor, farmers, government officials and others. The CC flipchart was used to give some information to the participants on good and bad practices that can can be expected. Aftewards, we split the group in three sub groups to gather their thoughts on their resources, climate threats and non climate threats.
Malem community is organizing to have protected areas in both the coastal-marine and upland (watershed) environments.


3rd Multiparite Review Meeting

During the week of August 7-12, thirdteen Oceania countries met at Yaren, Nauru for the PACC 3rd Multi Partite Meeting. The purpose of this meeting was to review the status of the 13 PACC projects in the Pacific. Also, the participants reviewed the new PACC Plus Funding from the Australian Government. Kosrae was nominated to host the next Multi Partite Review, that will bring over 40 participants from Oceania.

Friday, August 10, 2012

Loss and Damage interviews finished.


Curt, Kaiulani and John help Iris and Ginny with the data imput.  

The first week of August, the ten enumerators finished the questionaires, for a total of 364 households in the coastal areas of Kosrae. The enumerators collected information on the impacts of coastal erosion and high tides in the coastal residents. Also, fifteen in depth interviews were done, relating to coastal erosion. The people interviewed talk about different aspects of the effects of coastal erosion as fisheries, cultual sites, tourism, business, state laws and other. The data imput into the computer was finished on August 8. The results will be analized by Miss Iris Monnerau during September and October. These results will be presented by Miss Monnerau and the FSM PACC project director, Mr. Simpson Abraham next November, in Qatar. Qatar will be the venue for the Convention Of Parties (COP) of the United Nations Convention to Climate Change ( UNCCC). The data provided by this project will inform desition makers about the situation in Kosrae and add important imformation for project proposals and grants seeking.

 Iris and Simpson explain the project to the Kosrae State Legislators.



Iris and Simpson met with Malem senior citizens to gather information of changes during time. They comented of activities done that affected the coast.