Town Hall Meetings offered a sounding board for new collaborations and ideas, or opportunities to launch important products (e.g. books, open access tools) or major projects. Up to two Town Hall Meetings ran in parallel. Each Town Hall Meeting was under the guidance and direction of the Meeting Organiser who moderated the discussion. In this informal setting, attendees were encouraged to take an active role and participate in discussions led by the moderator.

Town Halls Meetings ran for up to 45 mins. There were 3 Town Hall Meeting sessions: click here to view the Program at a Glance. Town Hall Meeting 1 was on Tuesday 28th in the evening. Town Hall Meetings 2 and 3 occured during the lunch hours of Wednesday 29th and Thursday 30th. To allow for convenient participation during the lunch sessions, a boxed lunch for both these days was included in the registration price. Participants were encouraged to pick up their lunch, attend and share their voice in these collaborative discussions!

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Town Hall Meeting 1: Tuesday 28th March 2017

(Tuesday 28th / 5:15 – 6:00 pm / Paterson 2 room)

• Reviving Melanesia’s Ocean Economy: the case for action

Meeting Organisers: Sally Bailey*, Kesaia Tabunakawai, Leanne Fernandes

*Organisation: WWF Pacific

In 2015, BCG and the Global Change Institute, University of Queensland, collaborated with World Wildlife Fund (WWF), to produce the global Reviving the Ocean Economy report. This report helped in WWF and partner’s advocacy towards establishing ocean conservation as a key part of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Reviving Melanesia’s Ocean Economy report, is one of a series of regional reports designed to complement the Global report and take the analysis to the next level of detail.

The report describes the ocean’s major role in economic activity, livelihoods and food production. The ocean and coastal assets underpin much of the region’s economy and include marine fisheries, mangroves, coral reefs and seagrass beds. These assets are critical to the future of people’s livelihoods, food security and well-being, including providing resilience to climate change impacts. The Melanesia report sets out a clear set of measures that Pacific leaders and international partners can adopt to translate good commitments into scaled-up action to protect the region’s natural coastal and ocean assets, and secure food, livelihoods and the regional economy.

The report provides an opportunity to build greater momentum for ocean conservation in Melanesia and the wider Pacific particularly as we turn our focus to implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (including the upcoming UN summit on the implementation of ocean SDG14, co-hosted by Fiji and Sweden) and the Paris Agreement on climate change. During this Town Hall Meeting the outcomes of the report were presented and participants were encouraged to provide feedback and discuss ways forward.

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Town Hall Meeting 2: Wednesday 29th March 2017

(Wednesday 29th / 12:15 – 1:00 pm / Paterson 2 room)

• Professionalising the Resilience Sector in the Pacific (climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction and ecosystem services): establishing an industry association

Meeting Organisers: Sarah Hemstock*, Helene Jacot, Walid Lutfy

*Organisation: Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC)

This Town Hall Meeting, ‘Professionalising the Resilience Sector’, will be held on both Wednesday and Thursday. Throughout the two days, you will hear from the key designers and executors behind the €6.1 million project, the European Union Pacific Technical and Vocational Educational and Training (EU PacTVET) in Sustainable Energy and Climate Change Adaptation. The EU PacTVET is currently implemented by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community and the University of the South Pacific in all 15 Pacific – African, Caribbean and Pacific countries.

The specific focus of these Town Hall Meetings will be given to the newly established flagship program, the Pacific Regional Federation for Resilience Professionals (PRFRP). The PRFRP aspires and promises to boost the skills, education, training and employment opportunities for diverse professionals dedicated to climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction and maintaining ecosystem services in a highly vulnerable region. Practical examples from the newly developed curriculum in Sustainable Energy and Climate Change Adaptation will be provided. The meetings would be followed by deliberation and interactive discussion between the presenters and the audience on the experience of the PRFRP.

This Town Hall Meeting (Wednesday) focused on transferable lessons learned from the EU-PacTVET project and the establishment of the PRFRP. See Town Hall Meeting 2 (Thursday) for details on day two of Professionalising the Resilience Sector.

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(Wednesday 29th / 12:15 – 1:00 pm / Lawson 2 room)

• How to Enhance the Uptake of Ecosystem-based Adaptation

Meeting Organisers: Warren Lee Long; Jim Binney; Kesaia Marama Tabunakawai

Organisations: Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP); Mainstream Economics and Policy; WWF Pacific

Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) is now widely used in many developed countries; however for Pacific small island developing states (SIDS) there remain some challenges with structural engineering options being used when EbA options would have been more appropriate.

A facilitated discussion among government and non-government agencies, technical experts, donors and others in how to enhance the adoption of EbA in a practical sense was held.  Following the presentation of a practical EbA benefit-cost analysis used in the Pacfic, participants discussed other practical solutions to ongoing challenges such as:

• Mainstreaming EbA into DRM and DRR planning and investment in a development context.
• Practical solutions to better incorporate the climate risk mitigation and other ecosystem services aspects of EbA into climate adaptation planning and decision-making.
• Comparing EbA and structural adaptation initiatives within the same decision-making frameworks.
• Undertaking benefit-cost analyses and selection of EbA options in data-poor environments.

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Town Hall Meeting 3: Thursday 30th March 2017

(Thursday 30th / 12:30 – 1:15 pm /Lawson 2 room)

• Professionalising the Resilience Sector in the Pacific (climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction and ecosystem services): establishing an industry association

Meeting Organisers: Sarah Hemstock*, Helene Jacot, Walid Lutfy

*Organisation: Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC)

This Town Hall Meeting, ‘Professionalising the Resilience Sector’, will be held on both Wednesday and Thursday. Throughout the two days, you will hear from the key designers and executors behind the €6.1 million project, the European Union Pacific Technical and Vocational Educational and Training (EU PacTVET) in Sustainable Energy and Climate Change Adaptation. The EU PacTVET is currently implemented by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community and the University of the South Pacific in all 15 Pacific – African, Caribbean and Pacific countries.

The specific focus of these Town Hall Meetings will be given to the newly established flagship program, the Pacific Regional Federation for Resilience Professionals (PRFRP). The PRFRP aspires and promises to boost the skills, education, training and employment opportunities for diverse professionals dedicated to climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction and maintaining ecosystem services in a highly vulnerable region. Practical examples from the newly developed curriculum in Sustainable Energy and Climate Change Adaptation will be provided. The meetings would be followed by deliberation and interactive discussion between the presenters and the audience on the experience of the PRFRP.

See Town Hall Meeting 1 (Wednesday) for details on day one of Professionalising the Resilience Sector. This Town Hall Meeting (Thursday) delves deeper into the future of PRFRP in up-scaling the resilience profession (in the Pacific region and the role of the Pacific Scientific Technical Advisory Group of the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction).

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(Thursday 30th / 12:30 – 1:15 pm) This Town Hall Meeting was cancelled due to cyclone debbie

• Wetland Ecosystem Services in Oceania – beyond water

Meeting Organisers: Samantha Capon, Wade Hadwen, Cath Leigh, Mike Ronan

*Organisation: Australian Rivers Institute, Griffith University

This Town Hall Meeting will consider the value and status of ecosystem services provided by wetlands in the Oceania region. In particular, the focus of this meeting will be on how wetland ecosystem services beyond the provision of water are currently valued in the region and how this contributes to current decision-making regarding wetland policy and management. Major risks and trends in the status of critical wetland ecosystem services will be discussed along with existing and potential strategies for their protection, restoration and enhancement. Case studies will be presented from several recent and ongoing projects conducted in Queensland, the Murray-Darling Basin and the Pacific region, followed by a facilitated discussion to address the following specific challenges:

• Do recent ecosystem services frameworks (e.g. the Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services) adequately capture the range of ecosystem services provided by wetlands?
• Can an ecosystem services framework facilitate greater equity and sustainability in the management of wetland ecosystem services?

Outputs of the meeting will inform the development of a chapter on the status of wetland ecosystem services currently under preparation for the Ramsar Convention’s first State of the World’s Wetlands Report. In particular, key case studies from the Oceania region to support this global chapter will be sought.