Tonga, Samoa and Tuvalu will be able to access $15 million to strengthen resilience to disasters after the Asian Development Bank (ADB) announced on 18 December it would  provide policy-based loans and grants under its Pacific Disaster Resilience Program.

Assistance includes loans worth $3.1M and grants worth $2.9M each to Tonga and Samoa, with Tuvalu set to receive $3M in grants from the ADB’s grant-based development financing vehicle.

On top of this, the ADB says it will provide $2M in technical assistance for the three countries to implement their priority resilience building activities and also share their experiences.

ADB Pacific Department’s Climate Change Specialist, Hanna Uusimaa, said “this program will facilitate faster early recovery and reconstruction, which will significantly reduce the secondary economic and social costs normally caused by delays in reconstruction activities following a disaster event”.

The program alleviates the difficulty of securing finance experienced by many Pacific countries who have been hit hard by disasters, to be able to undertake early response, recovery, and reconstruction activities as well as priority disaster risk management.

It also addresses risks relating to disaster events that would normally drain annual contingency budgets or emergency funds, but may not be cost effectively covered by insurance.

This program emulates the Cook Islands Disaster Resilience Program supported by the ADB that was approved in December 2016, which uses disaster funding through policy-based financing.