22 September 2022, Suva/Honiara: A new climate resilience partnership has been established between the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS) and the Solomon Islands Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SICCI).

The partners signed a letter of agreement this month, supporting a stronger working relationship and cooperation between the Chamber of Commerce and the Pacific Islands Forum, who will share and promote the exchange of information, technical knowledge and capabilities of both organisations in climate change and resilience actions.

Pacific Islands Forum Acting Secretary General, Dr. Filimon Manoni welcomed the agreement., saying the agreement with SICCI, “will help the private sector to strengthen resilience actions for the private sector in Solomon Islands”.

“The private sector can be a driver of economic growth if given the opportunity. This requires genuine and on-going dialogue with business leaders, with our regional Framework for Resilient Development in the Pacific (FRDP) supporting more meaningful engagement with the private sector,” he said.

SICCI Chief Executive Officer, Natalina Hong also welcomed the new partnership with the Forum. She said, “As a membership driven organisation representing the private sector in Solomon Islands, this is a milestone for us. It will empower local enterprises to better understand their role in climate finance and resilience as we face one of our region’s biggest threats”.

The partnership continues Forum support to the region’s private sector to strengthen business engagement in climate finance and resilience and to build capacity of national private sector organisations. A key activity to strengthen collaboration between the private and public sectors is the national private sector mapping of climate change adaptation and mitigation initiatives.  There are also plans to provide targeted short-term training for businesses in Pacific Island countries and peer-to-peer learning in climate actions and resilience.

For the Solomon Islands, the private sector mapping findings included strong interests for improved access to climate change funding, more coordination between the private sector and public sectors, and increased awareness of international climate change funds to the private sector including the technically challenging application processes.

Planned partnership activities will cover a range of areas including:

·       awareness on climate change and resilience, including the role of the FRDP and the Pacific Resilience Partnership (PRP) to SICCI members and the private sector in Solomon Islands;

·       Network growth with international and regional climate change groups

·       capacity building in climate change and resilience;

·       sharing lessons learned and success stories from implementing climate change and disaster related projects;

·       coordination of climate change and disaster related initiatives at the national and regional levels; and

·       opportunities to participate and profile private sector engagement in climate and disaster risk finance in national or regional events.

The on-going support towards the private sector is supported through the European Union’s Intra-African Caribbean Pacific Global Climate Change Alliance+ (ACP GCCA+) Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change and Resilience Building (PACRES) Project. -ENDS