Field mission for DRR training of villages and government officials
Recently the SAMIS project started a collaboration with the global FAO project Country support to the enhancement of the Nationally Determined Contribution in the AFOLU sector - Technical Assistance Fund (TAF), on behalf of the NDC Partnership Climate Action Enhancement Package, also know as CAEP project
Through the Climate Action Enhancement Package (abbreviated CAEP, pronounced "cap") the NDC Partnership is delivering targeted, fast-track support to countries to enhance the quality, increase the ambition, and implement nationally determined contributions (or NDCs). The FAO project, whose symbol is MTF/GLO/168/WRI, targets Albania, Benin, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Colombia, Cote d'Ivoire, Ecuador, Eswatini, Gabon, Mongolia, Mozambique, Niger, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Tajikistan, Zimbabwe, and Lao PDR.
The activity under development in Lao PDR are managed by the Department of Climate Change (DCC) of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and include training of national level experts related to hands-on Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) activities. While DCC has experience on DRR policy and planning at central level, it appears to lack first hand local activities. Instead of planning a desk based training, a mission was organized to cover this gap.
The CAEP project will produce a new seasonal forecast bulletin focused on drought risk that will have to be distributed in at least four villages every month over the rainy season.
The first objective of the mission was to inform authorities about the ongoing testing of the new bulletin.
The second objective was to conduct a baseline data collection in Khammuance and Borikhamxay provinces to define the list of pilot villages.
The forth objective will be to present the existing LaCSA bulletin to communities a training and discussion, which will be facilitated by SAMIS staff. The community training has two results. Of course, communities will be informed about LaCSA and likely will start to use it. However, the second and most important activity in this mission has been to train DCC staff to undertake direct ground DRR activities. This should enable to continue the next field phase of the project independently.
More information on CAEP are available at https://ndcpartnership.org/caep