On 13 August 2013, Richard Mann, Deputy Director General of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) and Hervé Breton, Director of theAgence Française de Développement (AFD – French Development Agency) in Noumea, who also represented the Fonds Français pour l’Environnement Mondial (FFEM – French Fund for the Global Environment), signed an funding agreement of four million euros, i.e. XPF 477.3 million, to be provided in equal parts by the AFD and FFEM. Jean-Luc Fauré-Tournaire, France’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the Pacific Community, also attended the ceremony.
This funding will support a regional cooperation project in the South Pacific designed to restore ecosystem services and support climate change adaptation, i.e. the RESCCUE “Restoration of Ecosystems Services against Climate Change Unfavorable Effects” project.
This regional project, whose ultimate goal is to increase the climate change resilience of Pacific-island land and marine ecosystems, aims at maintaining and strengthening the services those ecosystems provide communities by building local communities’ governance and disaster management capabilities.
Managed by SPC, this five-year project will be carried out at sites in Fiji, New Caledonia, French Polynesia and Vanuatu that are representative of the region’s environmental and socio-economic diversity. It will focus on improving and sustainably funding integrated coastal zone management, most notably by setting up payment mechanisms to help maintain ecosystem services at the selected pilot sites.
SPC