US Ambassador to Fiji, Marie Damour (centre) officially launches the Drought Recovery and Climate Resilience project and ADRA Fiji’s Learning Environmental Adaptation Project (LEAP). Photo: USAID Pacific
The United States Agency for International Development will eventually have a team of about 30 at its USAID Pacific Islands office in Fiji.
The office is being re-established in August in the wake of last year's summit between US President Joe Biden and Pacific leaders in Washington DC.
The Manila-based deputy assistant director of USAID, Betty Chung, said currently there are just two staffers in Fiji but by the end of the year they hope to have eight to 10 there, building up to about 30.
She said the USAID budget for the Pacific has tripled in the past three years and there is support for this expansion.
"We have designed a lot more programmes in terms of the environment and climate adaptation and mitigation space and we are looking a digital connectivity project, a lot more economic growth projects.
"We are very interested in more global health security project. I think the response is, clearly, the USA didn't even have a Pacific Islands strategic framework, but we do now."
Chung doesn't believe the expansion is about countering the influence of China in the region.
She said USAID's involvement in the Pacific goes back to the 1980s, but until recently it was not in a substantial way.
The Fiji USAID office will focus mostly on Polynesia and Micronesia, while the already more substantial Papua New Guinea office will focus on Melanesia.
Projects in action
USAID said one project it is supporting is to help 80 vulnerable communities to build their resilience and adaptation to climate change through Live and Learn Fiji and Adventist Disaster Relief Agency (ADRA Fiji).
In Bua province, US Ambassador to Fiji, Marie Damour has officially launched the Drought Recovery and Climate Resilience project and ADRA Fiji's Learning Environmental Adaptation Project (LEAP).
USAID said the two projects will improve the lives and livelihoods for over 500 households and 5000 subsistence farmers across Fiji
Meanwhile, USAID said it was supporting the Solomon Islands National Transport Fund, which helps maintain, develop, and manage transport infrastructure in the country to become accredited to the Green Climate Fund.
USAID is also funding a series of programmes to improve the quality of public agencies across the Pacific.
Earlier this month it was announced the Pacific Community (SPC), funded by USAID, is to reform the Vanuatu Public Service, a project that is to be extended to other jurisdictions.
At the recent meeting of US officials in Papua New Guinea, the aid agency offered to help PNG resolve its issues around election-related violence.
Betty Chung said USAID receives Congressional funding from its Global Fragility Act.
"This is the area that we're working with Papua New Guinea to support their peace and security programmes and to bolster their sustainable and equitable economic growth, and really helping them with their goals to strengthen their communities and be a lot more resilient," she said.
USAID was created by the Kennedy Administration in 1961 when it brought together several existing foreign assistance organisations and programmes.
Today, the organisation "support partners to become self-reliant and capable of leading their own development journeys".