A new climate resilience training curriculum has been rolled out across six Pacific Island Countries following a two-year development process led by PIRT's Climate Working Group in partnership with the Pacific Community (SPC). The curriculum equips community conservation practitioners with the knowledge and tools to assess climate risks to their local ecosystems, design adaptive management responses, and integrate climate scenarios into protected area management plans.
The training programme was piloted in Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Marshall Islands, and Kiribati, reaching 187 community-based conservation practitioners in its first year. Each country cohort completed an eight-day residential training followed by a six-month mentored field application, during which participants developed site-specific climate adaptation plans for community-managed conservation areas they were responsible for.
Early results are encouraging. End-of-programme assessments showed an average 73 percent increase in participants' understanding of climate-biodiversity interactions and a 68 percent increase in their confidence to design adaptive management interventions. More significantly, 142 of the 187 participants had begun implementing at least one concrete adaptation measure in their conservation sites within three months of completing the programme.
The Climate Working Group is now seeking funding to expand the programme to the remaining 16 PICTs, with a target of reaching 500 additional practitioners by the end of 2027. PIRT member organisations in countries not yet covered by the programme are encouraged to contact the Working Group secretariat to express interest in hosting a national training cohort. A condensed version of the curriculum is also being developed for delivery at PIC11 as a pre-conference workshop on 6 September 2026.