Fiji National University (FNU) as Fiji’s national university plays a pivotal role in providing policy guidance in climate change matters.

These were the comments by FNU Executive Masters in Business Administrations (EMBA), programme Director, Dr Rohit Kishore during the workshop on “Blue Economy, Disaster Risk Financing and Ocean Infrastructure” organised by FNU in partnership with the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI), Japan’s Ocean Policy Research Institute (OPRI) and Asia Pacific Applied Economic Association (APAEA) in Nadi.

“We are the nation’s state university and are at the forefront of public policy research in Fiji and we are tasked by our Vice Chancellor to provide research guidance to the government in policy development, including disaster risk management and sustainable development,” said Economist Dr Kishore.

While opening the workshop on behalf of FNU Vice Chancellor, Professor Nigel Healey, Dr Kishore stated that FNU is developing research capacity in providing solutions to climate change related problems from an economic and finance perspective.

“Economic development is essential and has to continue. However, in the past, uncontrolled development carried out particularly by the developed nations, has inadvertently caused damage to the nature’s ecosystem which has brought upon us the issue of climate change. Excess emission of dangerous anthropogenic gas into the ecosystem has damaged the ozone layer, which has seen increase in atmospheric temperature, which in return is causing the rising of the sea level. The effect of rising sea level is severely felt by the low laying smaller pacific island nations, for example Kiribati, Nauru, Micronesia, Niue and others, which are fast going under the sea waters,” he said

According to Dr Kishore the workshop is focused in achieving solutions to the problems on both sides. The main discussion of this workshop were around the following theme:

• To build capacity of smaller nations in getting private sector to invest in environment infrastructure redevelopment,
• To empower government officials from Small Island developing states (SIDS) to deploy policies that foster sustainable blue economies in the face of climate change,
• To strengthen disaster risk management and resilient growth, and advance the Sustainable Development Goals in SIDS as natural disasters become more frequent and intense as a result of climate change.

The workshop was attended by policymakers and experts in disaster management, ocean infrastructure, and related fields in SIDS and other coastal ADB member countries highly affected by climate change.

This is the first of the series of similar workshops planned by ADBI, OPRI and APAEA together of FNU; with more to come, said Dr Kishore.