The project will close at the end of this month, after six-years of negotiation, design and implementation, assisted by SMEC Limited of Australia as project management unit. 

He said the seawall is 2.305 km long, which provides coastal protection for Navutoka and Manuka against storm surges and extreme weather events. The crest of the seawall is 2.7m above ground level. The construction included three boat ramps; picnic areas; and landscaping.

Two boat trailers were procured to assist the local fisherman and communities to pull local fishing boats in and out of the water easily in preparation for cyclone seasons.

Construction started in April 2018 and was completed in September this year, with local Petani Quarry.

The seawall was constructed for $4.4 million pa’anga, with the work led by the Ministry Infrastructure.

Tonga is the second “most at risk” country in the world to natural disasters, and the potentially most devastating risk is a tsunami.

"Based on scientific and engineering studies, if an earthquake occurred at the Tonga Trench, the second deepest sea in the world, and triggered a tsunami, Navutoka and Manuka and these low lying areas will be the worst affected. That was the reason for constructing the sea wall in this area."

Evacuation roads

Meanwhile, the construction and rehabilitation of the evacuation and post disaster access roads were to provide escape routes for areas vulnerable to flooding and tsunamis in Talafo’ou, Navutoka, Popua, and in Tufuvai ‘Eua.

Work started in July 2017 and was completed in August 2018, with a total cost of $3.1 million pa’anga for these four roads at a length of 6.6km.

Local Luna’eva Quarry was the contractor under the supervision and lead by the Ministry of Infrastructure.  

Paula said the other project was the meteorological equipment, coastal monitoring system and installation of the automatic weather station (AWS) at Kolonga.

This is to strengthen the capacity of the Meteorological Service of the Ministry of MEIDECC to provide improved weather and marine forecasts, and to develop improved meteorological and coastal data towards effective planning for natural disasters due to the impact of climate change, he said.

Work started in August 2018 and completed in October this year, with a cost of $3 million pa’anga. 

This component provided 23 meteorology stations throughout Tonga including two permanent sea- level stations, computer database hardware, fencing, civil works, sea level stations, design of the network, temporary coastal data collection stations, forecasting products, hardware’s and softwares, and training of meteorological staffs, he said.

The work was carried out by the National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research Limited of New Zealand.

"Commissioning of the seawall, evacuation roads, and the meteorological equipment not only marked successful completion by CRSP, but also the beginning of a long journey for us all, to addressing the devastation of Climate Change in order to save the lives of our people and generation to come."

Other projects funded by CRSP had included US$5 million put into the climate change trust fund (CCTF) through which 74 community projects have been approved, mostly for the construction of rainwater harvesting and evacuation centers, including training of government staff in climate change, among others.

Resilience

Tatafu Moeaki, ADB Senior Country Coordination Officer, commended the Government of Tonga and MEIDECC for their vision in important projects, such as these. He said this is just a small portion as there are a lot of other works to be done.

ADB had put emphasis to ensuring the resilience of these projects and acknowledged the people in the villages for working together with the local contractors.

The local villages celebrated the commissioning with dancing and a feast.