Governments need to partner with the private sector on many of the climate resilient projects.

This was highlighted by Attorney-General, and Minister for Economy Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, during a press conference at the GPH yesterday.

Mr Sayed-Khaiyum was accompanied by Changing International Monetary Fund (IMF) director of the Asia and Pacific department Changyong Rhee, Asian Development Bank’s director general for the Pacific Department Xianbin Yao and Japanese International Co-operation Agency (JICA) senior vice president, Yasushi Kanzaki.

The A-G shared some of the issues emanating from the High-Level Pacific Island Dialogue on Building Resilience to Natural Disasters and Climate Change.

Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said Fiji was working with financial institutions not only to fund climate resilient infrastructure but also tap into the technical expertise existing within these organisations.

“We in Fiji believe that we also partner with the private sector.  We have seen some discussions around that and how some countries have done it successfully,” Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said.

Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said the task facing us was how to build our resilience to natural disasters.

“Now of course with the context of climate change, natural disasters in particular in terms of things like hurricanes and cyclones it’s gaining frequency and also it’s increasing in intensity.

“But of course the level of vulnerability becomes more enhanced given the size of our economies.

“Given the lack of economies or economies of scale that still exist within the Pacific Island Countries so we have a challenge.

“And it is very important for us to address these challenges to have development partners such as IMF, ADB, JICA and various other partners such as World Bank to work together with us to be able to find solutions to these problems.

He said these are not necessarily easy challenges but they also require a lot of input and a lot of resources.

Edited by Ranoba Baoa

Feedback:  maraia.vula@fijisun.com.fj