Enhancing Resilience of Samoa’s Coastal Communities to Climate Change

The bulk of the programme will focus on making improvements to infrastructure in ways that will help Samoan communities adapt to climate change. Before building begins, the programme proponents intend to assist 25 districts with reviewing their coastal infrastructure management plans, which are community based plans focusing upon response planning for individual villages taking into account their particular geographical circumstances and the community‘s perceptions of their needs. The plans will be updated to integrate climate change-induced disaster risk management principles, adopting a Watershed and Ridge to Reef Management approach. In addition, village hazard zone relocation plans, taking climate risks into account, will be formulated in at least 15 villages in selected districts. Any new construction will be a result of these consultations on coastal infrastructure and village relocation.

Finally, the programme intends to capture key lessons learned and building capacity improvements in ways that will ensure they can be sustained in the future as a core activity of the government.