The Melanesian countries of the Pacific, Fiji, Papua New Guinea (PNG), Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, face significant challenges in access to electricity (Vanuatu, PNG and Solomon Islands have the lowest levels of electrification in the Pacific) while having the most renewable energy resources, including hydro, wind, solar, geothermal and biomass. All four countries, under their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) implementation commitments, need to simultaneously boost economic growth, provide electricity access (SDG 7), and meet national and international greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. Green Economy (GE) and Renewable Energy (RE) implementation provide a means to achieve these aims.

Green growth in the Pacific faces numerous challenges, particularly in mainstreaming renewable energy and energy efficiency into provincial and local level planning and creating an enabling environment for sustainable implementation of renewable energy projects at the provincial and rural level. The two challenges that this project; a collaboration between the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF) and Korean International Cooperation Agency (KOICA); will address are:

(1) lack of access to information and training on green economy and renewable energy principles faced by local government officials, communities, small businesses, and traditional leaders. Access to accurate information from neutral sources  is critical in helping officials and community leaders make more informed decisions on their local resources and the use of these resources (energy, water, land use), and to ensure the most sustainable management practices are utilized for their existing and planned renewable energy and other development projects.

(2) limited opportunities for women and vulnerable groups to be involved in renewable energy and green growth projects and limited capacity within this group to contribute towards decision-making and implementation.

The project focuses on developing training materials in Green Economy (energy efficiency, inclusive development) and Renewable Energy (small-scale solar and hydropower) that target the needs of relevant stakeholders and groups, and deliver these developed and customized training materials through working closely with local government counterparts to ‘dovetail’ with existing or planned RE projects and provide training to communities which are directly involved in renewable energy projects. The aim is to boost knowledge where communities are/will be involved in the operation and maintenance of solar and/or hydro systems while also providing training in related green economy aspects to help inform future decision-making.

The training provided through these materials will be customized according to each country’s needs through consultations with stakeholders and gathering of country specific information through a pre-implementation survey.  The selection of communities where the project will be implemented will be confirmed by the national counterparts in each country following an agreed set of criteria, including accessibility, existing or planned renewable energy projects and population and services (health center, school).

A challenge for the project will be reaching and training rural women and vulnerable groups, who often do not have the opportunity to participate in training on RE and GE. Reaching these target groups will depend on the role and number of women and vulnerable groups that are currently actively involved in the traditional and formal governance structures in place, and working with stakeholders to identify avenues for participation (through women’s groups, church associations, etc.). Close collaboration with all relevant stakeholders (government and non-government) will be key in adopting gender-responsive and vulnerable group-inclusive training strategies.

Furthermore, the training materials developed through this project will also be made available for general use in Fiji, Vanuatu, PNG and Solomon Islands as well as to the rest of the Pacific SIDS via the development of an online knowledge platform: https://greeneducationportal.org/.

Overall the project aims to

• Improve knowledge of GE and RE options for local level planning
• Increase inclusivity in decision-making for the use of natural resources and implementation of renewable energy projects
• Improve sustainability of rural RE installations

• Review of existing training materials in the areas of GE and RE
• Development of 10 training modules in GE and RE
• Customization of training modules and methods where needed to make them responsive to gender and inclusivity needs
• Customization and translation of modules for the four target countries
• Training of trainers
• Training of target groups (local government officials, traditional/community leaders, small businesses and local technicians) in the 4 countries
• Knowledge platform on GE and RE available to a broad audience in the Pacific and other SIDS

Since the project started in December 2018, the following activities have been completed:

• The Needs Assessments for all four countries have been completed
• The Regional Project Launch and Planning was held in Fiji in April 2019:
  Press release: https://gggi.org/renewable-energy-capacity-building-project-in-four-pacific-countries-launched/
  Report: https://greeneducationportal.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/KOICA_Inception_Workpshop_2019.pdf
• National Workshops in Fiji, PNG, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu have been conducted. In these workshops, possible training institutions to partner with were identified. Also, in PNG, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed with the Central Provincial Administration. All four workshop reports can be accessed here: https://greeneducationportal.org/library/
• The pre-implementation surveys in all four countries have been completed.

Knowledge management plan has been put into action with the structure of the online platform created here: https://greeneducationportal.org/

PNG Workshop Group Photo, KOICA Capacity Building Project

In 2020, the project will finalize the training modules for Green Economy and Renewable Energy (inclusive of Gender and Inclusivity components), train the trainers and start training the target groups.

The following activities have been planned for completion in 2020:

• Finalization of target groups and numbers of participants per group
• Development of 10 training modules ready for pilot training
• Selection of the trainers for each of the Melanesian countries
• Training of trainers and pilot training for target groups (approx. 100-150 people from all target group levels)
• Regional workshop and Project Steering Committee workshop to validate/finalize all training modules
• Finalization of all the ten training modules, customizing and translating into local languages
• Main training of communities to begin
• Continuous updating of the online platform for all training material and knowledge management and information dissemination