Climate Policy and Strategy

Samoa’s National Climate Policy (NCP), issued in 2007, provides a comprehensive list of actions that need to be taken to respond to climate change covering adaptation, mitigation and climate services (incl. awareness, information, capacity and regulations). Although the NCP is comprehensive, it provides no guidance on how to prioritise and plan investment in mitigation or adaptation. This guidance has, instead, been provided by the National Greenhouse Gas Abatement Strategy (NGHGAS) and National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA).

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Policy on mitigation is governed by the NGHGAS, dealing with emissions, and the National Energy Policy (NEP), dealing with energy generation, efficiency and markets. These policies have been effective and there has been much progress in renewable energy generation and reforms to the energy sector that should help to promote efficient demand.

The NAPA has been the main guiding document for expenditure on adaptation. Samoa's NAPA provides a balanced overview of sectoral needs and good strategic context, especially when read in conjunction with the NCP. The NAPA includes climate services as one priority plus priorities across eight sectors. There has been substantial progress across all the NAPA sectors and most of the priorities have been addressed by development programmes

Institutional Arrangement

A coordinating body is currently provided by the National Climate Change Country Team (NCCCT) (Figure 1).The NCCCT is a working team since it is not established by any legislation or regulation. The NCCCT includes all relevant ministries, plus representatives from NGOs. The NCCCT was effective in supervising the formulation of the NCP and in managing the NAPA. The NCCCT can be supported by a regulation to strengthen its role as a coordinating body.

The Samoa Climate Public Expenditure and Institutional Review (CPEIR) was carried out to review the expenditure on activities related to climate change and to assess the extent to which this expenditure is guided by existing policy and institutional responsibilities. Based on this review, the CPEIR aims to generate recommendations for improving the climate relevance of public expenditure in the future, through improvements to policies, institutions and the management of public finances. The CPEIR reviewed climate policies; institutions involved in climate change policy and finance; public finance management (PFM), including a classification of recurrent and development expenditure and the processes involved; and village level activities dealing with adaptation or mitigation.

The CPEIR was guided by a Steering Committee comprising representatives from the main ministries involved (i.e. Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Natural Resources and

Environment, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries) and from NGOs and the private sector.

The findings of the CPEIR will inform the new Samoa Development Strategy and a new medium to long term Climate Change Plan and Programme (CCPP) that is being prepared by government during the second half of 2012.