SPREP launches Pacific climate change portal

The Pacific Climate Change Portal was launched in Noumea at the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme.

www.pacificclimatechange.net is the ‘go to’ site that houses all information on climate change in the Pacific region.
“This site was developed after request during the Pacific Climate Change Roundtable in 2009,” said Director General of SPREP Mr David Sheppard.
“It really aims to ensure the substantial amount of climate change related information and tools produced by regional and national institutions are available, easily accessible in a user-friendly manner.”
The Pacific Climate Change Portal will help improve and strengthen understanding of climate change issues by a greater number of people in the region by acting as the hub for climate change information and knowledge sharing.
The current features of the Pacific Climate Change Portal is an events calendar, experts directory, documents, national and regional committees, image library and links to virtual libraries in the Pacific that house information on climate change.
Continual development of the Pacific Climate Change Portal will take place to ensure the site remains current and addresses the needs of users.
“There is a feature now in development that is the Pacific Climate Change Projects Database that will act as a monitoring and evaluation tool for the Pacific Island Framework for Action on Climate Change (PIFACC). It will house information on climate change projects in the Pacific from 2011 – 2015.”
An Advisory committee comprising of partners Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, Secretariat of the Pacific Community, University of the South Pacific, GIZ and SPREP is formed to help provide advice on the strategic direction of the portal. One planned future development will be the Geographical Information System (GIS) training module to be made available on the portal.
“We’d really like to encourage people to log on to www.pacificclimatechange.net to try the website out and provide us with some feedback. We aim to ensure this site is as helpful as possible to users.”
Partners that have helped bring the Pacific Climate Change Portal to development are: GIZ, University of the South Pacific, Secretariat of the Pacific Community, and the Pacific Island Forum Secretariat.

For more information on the Pacific Climate Change Portal please email Ms. Makelesi Gonelevu, the Knowledge Management Officer at SPREP at: makelesig@sprep.org