SUVA/KOROR (Island Times/Pacnews) — Communities in Palau could lose financing access to the Pacific Resilience Facility if Palau and other Micronesian nations leave the Pacific Islands Forum or PIF.
One of the issues Pacific leaders will discuss in the upcoming Forum Economic Ministers Meeting is the main launch of the funding support in Oct. 2021.
The aim of the Pacific Resilience Facility or PRF is to ensure that Pacific nations will not be saddled in debt, and will have access to funds for projects that will help communities prepare and plan ahead of disasters.
Small scale projects in the community can include retrofitting of schools, local roads, and community halls to better prepare for the impacts of climate change.
But the exit from the Forum of Micronesian nations, including Palau, could mean that they won’t be part of the PRF, Denton Rarawa, Forum senior economist told reporters.
“The [Pacific Resilience] Facility [is] intended to assist community projects in the region…so if the Micronesian countries would come back, they will benefit from it. But if they withdraw, they will not be part of the facility,” Rarawa said.
He said they are now soliciting support from the Forum’s traditional and non-traditional major partners for the capitalization of the PRF.
The objective, he said, is to raise about $1.5 billion to fund the facility which the Forum calls a “Pacific owned, Pacific led solution.”
In Feb. 2021, the presidents of Nauru, the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and Palau announced their countries’ withdrawal from the Forum after it elected Henry Puna of the Cook Islands as its new secretary general.
The Micronesian leaders said there was a gentleman’s agreement to rotate the Forum’s top position among Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia, and that it should have been Micronesia’s turn to assume the secretary general’s post.
The flags of the Pacific Islands Forum member countries.
