US agency funds K3.3m climate change projects

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United State Agency for International Development (USAID) has funded four new community-based conservation and climate-change projects in the country at a cost of $US1.04million (K3.3million), a representative of the fund providers says.
During the project’s awards presentations to the four recipients in Port Moresby yesterday, Peter Collier, the chief of party at the Pacific-American Climate Fund which funded the projects, highlighted the strong partnership needed to produce durable results.
“The Pacific-American Climate Fund is committed to fund and improve environment protection and biodiversity conservation and climate change projects in the Pacific, including PNG,” Collier said.
“To realise tangible outcomes, all stakeholders and project partners at the national, sub-national down to the local communities need to work together to make it happen.”
Deputy managing director for the Conservation and Environment Protection Authority (Cepa) Dilu Muguwa said that  donor agencies and multilateral partners were showing great interest in conservation efforts in the country though  government support through funding allocation was less.
“The donor partners like USAID, United Nations Development Programme, Japanese International Cooperation Agency and other multilateral partners and donors are doing well to support conservation projects but the issue we have is working in parallel with the established state agencies like Cepa,” Muguwa said.
“So in the future, we are looking at addressing these issues so that there is proper management in place to ensure we have an effective and transparent management system in place so projects are managed well to tangible outcomes on the ground.”