Today, at the 53rd gathering of the Pacific Islands Forum, the United States, through USAID, announced that it intends to work with Congress to provide more than $10 million in additional funding to support Pacific Island countries' ability to adapt to climate change, strengthen disaster resilience, and achieve their goals in advancing good governance.
Bolster Climate Resilience
USAID is launching two new complementary climate finance activities, delivering on our promise to support our partners in the Pacific to address climate change, which Pacific countries have defined as their most pressing challenge. The first is a new five-year effort to help Pacific countries and regional institutions access and manage climate finance from a variety of sources, including multi-donor trust funds, bilateral donors, philanthropies, and the private sector. Access to this funding is critical for countries' adaptation priorities and solutions. This project builds on years of successful collaboration with local partners and the private sector to mobilize more than $562 million in climate finance to improve health, food, water security, marine ecosystems, biodiversity, conservation and natural resource management across 11 countries, benefiting more than 800,000 people.
The second climate finance initiative is a new line of effort through the USAID Climate Finance Development Accelerator to catalyze new partnerships with the private sector to scale up successful local solutions and approaches to climate change mitigation and adaptation in Fiji and Papua New Guinea. Together, these efforts will unlock private funding and scale development solutions to build communities' resilience by effectively adapting and responding to the climate and disaster impacts, threatening their very existence.
Working with Congress, USAID also intends to provide $2 million to support climate-smart agriculture in the Pacific and increase the availability of nutritious, safe, and affordable foods.
Delivering on our promise to empower local partners, the U.S. Embassy in Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Tonga, and Tuvalu kicked off the first round of grant applications for the USAID-funded Ambassador's Self-Help Small Grants Program. With additional rounds of application periods to be announced in the future, and an intent to expand this program to additional Pacific Island countries, this marks the beginning of a program that will provide targeted funding for small-scale, community-led projects across the Pacific region. Applications for local solutions and capacity building projects that address the impact of climate change, mitigate disaster risk, and address environmental degradation in Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Tonga, and Tuvalu are due on September 14, 2024.
Strengthen Disaster Preparedness
USAID will also provide more than $3.6 million to bolster local, provincial, and national disaster preparedness throughout the Pacific region. This funding will support a new partnership with Pacific Community to enhance emergency management systems and coordination, extend USAID's long-standing partnership with the World Food Program in the region, and expand humanitarian partners' efforts to train emergency responders. In addition, USAID will support a collaborative initiative through the International Organization for Migration that brings together disaster response authorities in the Philippines and select Pacific Island nations to share best practices, strategies, and identify and address gaps in disaster preparedness and response.
Advance Good Governance and Strengthening Partnerships for Development
USAID is investing more than $4.5 million to strengthen inclusive governance in the region, expanding existing programs and launching new initiatives that support free and fair elections, elevate women's political participation, and advance climate resilience. This will complement ongoing efforts to include civil society and non-state actors as a part of the Implementation Plan for the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent.
Further, USAID signed a new Memorandum of Understanding with the University of Guam to diversify USAID's strategic partnerships and programming approach in the Pacific Islands. This marks the seventh such partnership under USAID's Minority Serving Institutions Partnerships Initiative, the first in the Pacific region, and the first with an Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Serving Institution. This partnership will harness the University of Guam's extensive research capacity, including on climate and water, as well as geographical and cultural expertise, to contribute to the development and sustainability of several islands across the Pacific. This MOU strengthens USAID's ties with U.S. territories and celebrates the importance of improving educational access and opportunities for all U.S. citizens, not just those on the U.S. mainland.
Additionally, on August 22, in Suva, USAID and MASHAV, Israel's development agency, announced their intent to increase formal cooperation through a regional project that aims to strengthen human capital through knowledge transfer and capacity building. The joint project will advance gender equality, community resilience, innovation, digitization, entrepreneurship, and water management throughout the Pacific.
These announcements reflect USAID's enduring commitment to listen, partner, and deliver together with Pacific Island countries. Our programs are guided by the 2018 Boe Declaration and the 2050 Blue Pacific Continent Strategy, which are rooted in economic trade and integration, inclusion, locally-led solutions, and the democratic values that can positively transform our shared planet.
