Pacific Islands Climate Change Assistance Programme (PICCAP)

Description of Intervention

The PICCAP project started in 1997 funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and executed by SPREP to assist 10 Pacific Island countries that signed and ratified the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) with their reporting, training, capacity building under the convention. Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Republic of Republic of Marshall Islands, Nauru, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu have appointed Climate Change Country Teams and a Climate Change Country Co-coordinators to:
• Inventorise sources and sinks of greenhouse gases;
• Identify and evaluate mitigation options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions;
• Assess vulnerability to climate change; 
• Develop adaptation options; and
• Develop a national implementation strategy for mitigating and adapting to climate change over the long term.

Niue and PNG also have climate change programmes, but these are funded directly by GEF through the United Nations Environment Programme(UNEP) and UNDP, and are not included in PICCAP.

Problems to be Addressed

Build capacity on reporting and training under the UNFCCC

Aims

Designed to strengthen capacities of participating countries in terms of training, institutional strengthening and planning activities to enable meeting of reporting commitments under UNFCCC

Objectives

There are six major capacity building objectives leading to the following outputs:
• An inventory of greenhouse gas sources and sinks;
• An evaluation of mitigation options;
• National vulnerability assessments;
• An evaluation of adaptation options;
• A national climate change implementation plan; and
• First national communications under the UNFCCC.

Relevant Publications

n/a