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The earth works like a greenhouse. Carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, and other naturally occurring greenhouse gases (GHGs), as well as human-made industrial gases trap heat from escaping into space. This keeps the earth’s temperature within a life-sustaining range. Without the greenhouse effect, Earth would be much colder—an average temperature of –19° Celsius (C). Human reliance on fossil fuels for energy has increased the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Biogenic emissions of GHG from land use have magnified the greenhouse effect. Deforestation and poor land use, which have reduced the absorptive capacity of plants, forests, and soils for CO2, have made things worse.

Farmers cultivate steep hillside plantations of taro and bananas. Fishing communities pull tuna and marlin from the blue depths of the Pacific Ocean. Households tend mile after mile of neatly trimmed roadside gardens. Samoa’s beautiful natural environment also offers a striking setting for a rich and complex culture. Communities headed by traditional leaders, the matai, meet regularly in fale, the open-sided houses, to reach communal decisions. And on Sundays the roads are flooded with families dressed in dazzling white clothes flocking to hundreds of churches.

On the 14-15 October 2010, 14 Pacific Island countries met to discuss the Pilot Program for Climate Resilience. This meeting was attended by representatives from Australia, Cook Islands, Fiji Islands, Kiribati, Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu. At the meeting there were also representatives from international, regional and national organizations, development partners and non-government organisations. The meeting was jointly hosted by the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank.

Th e Vanuatu Economic Report 2009 outlines the state of economy and social development in the country and presents a road map for addressing key development challenges. It identifies the principal binding development constraints and opportunities in public sector performance, private sector and social development, and governance.

This Climate Change Implementation Plan (CCIP) for the Pacific Regional Department (PARD) of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) describes the areas of focus for PARD's operations and identifies key gaps between country and ADB actions, as well as opportunities for scaling up ADB's assistance related to mitigation, adaptation and associated cross-cutting needs. This gap analysis points to recommended interventions in regional and country programs for additional technical assistance (TA) and financial assistance, including access to new climate funds and adoption of new financing mechanisms. These include multi-donor Climate Investment Funds (Clean Technology Fund and Strategic Climate Fund), ADB's Future Carbon Fund, and possibly a new Sustainable Fuel Credits mechanism to promote reduced petroleum consumption. The CCIP will evolve through periodic updates in order to effectively guide ongoing and future programs and TA and project design. Going forward, specific climate change interventions will continue to be incorporated into the Country Partnership Strategy (CPS) and Country Operations Business Plan (COBP) for each Pacific Developing Member Country (PDMC) and into the Regional Operations Business Plan (ROBP) for the Pacific region as a whole. TA and investment projects will be designed, taking into consideration regional and country variations in governance, institutional capacity, and geographic and local environmental conditions.

The Pacific Strategy for the New Millennium1 of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) focuses on the core objectives of (i) continuing support for economic growth, good governance, and public sector reform; (ii) promoting private sector development as the engine for growth; and (iii) supporting sustainable environmental management and equitable social development. A new regional strategy is being prepared for ADB operations in the Pacific, which will focus on the priority needs of the poor, as defined by an extensive program of qualitative and quantitative poverty assessment, based on listening to the voices of those in hardship or poverty. The new strategy will focus on improving access to basic services and creating employment opportunities. As the Government is beginning preparation of its Strategic Development Plan 8 (SDP8) for 2005-2007, it is timely to review ADB’s strategy and program for Tonga.

In September 2000, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) issued a call for proposals to undertake ‘sub-global’ assessments at local, national, and regional scales. The Call for Proposals was circulated amongst a group of social scientists who had previously had some connection to PNG’s Biodiversity Conservation and Resource Management Program – an initiative which had been funded by the Global Environment Facility from 1993 to 1998. This program had sought to evaluate the actual and potential effectiveness of ‘integrated conservation and development projects’ in forested areas of PNG where high biodiversity values are associated with low population densities. One of the key lessons of the program had been that local communities in these areas are far more interested in ‘development’ than in ‘conservation’, because they can reasonably say that they have been conserving their ecosystems for thousands of years, but are now lagging in their access to modern health and education services because of their small and scattered populations (McCallum and Sekhran 1997; van Helden 1998, 2001; Filer 2004b). If the Government cannot afford to provide these services to remote and thinly populated areas, then local people tend to dream of the day when a logging company or mining company will deliver them from their state of backwardness.

The purpose of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) Pacific Strategy 2005-2009 is to provide a framework for ADB operations in its 14 Pacific developing member countries (PDMCs)1 and for ADB support to regional cooperation in the Pacific. This third ADB Pacific Strategy will allow ADB's Pacific Department (PARD) to better focus its activities, deepen its experience and expertise in key result areas (KRAs), and align resources to strategy objectives, in order to maximize the impact of ADB support to the development efforts of the PDMCs.

ADB's strategy for Tonga supports the Government's development goals. The focus of assistance in 2005-2006 will be (i) continuing assistance to the Government's reform program to enhance sound economic and public sector management; (ii) addressing the emerging deterioration in some social indicators through targeted interventions that promote inclusive social development; and (iii) improving the enabling environment for private sector development. The key projects for the period under consideration will be (i) assistance to develop a new strategic development plan for Tonga, linked to a multi-year fiscal framework and an annual resource allocation process; (ii) continued support for public enterprise reforms, especially the privatization of selected public enterprises; (iii) addressing youth unemployment and associated social problems; (iv) improving basic infrastructure for drainage and sanitation in selected areas in the capital, Nuku'alofa; and (v) agriculture sector development through an enhanced policy environment and development of small and medium agriculture-based enterprises.