A Fiji Youth advocate says the country needs to spend more time and resources on preparing for natural disasters, instead of simply reacting to them after they happen.
Youth leaders from around the Pacific are taking part in the Power Shift Pacific: Looking Beyond Disaster - Youth Forum and are developing action plans on how to strengthen community resilience to disasters.
Fiji Youth advocate, Jone Sinavi's first up-close experience with a natural disaster was assessing the damage of flash flooding in 2009.
He says there have been on-going flash-floods in Fiji for the past few years and it seems a lot of the time is spent reacting to disasters.
"You know in reacting, it's like a total waste of resources, we don't have a lot of resources in Fiji and if we keep on reacting this way for the next 5 years to natural disasters I think it's going to be an extra burden on the government. But if we had been pro-active, even livelihoods and we can save some lives the sweat people have to build up their resources we can safeguard those things."
Jone Sinavi says his aim is to find culturally appropriate ways to get across the message of being pro-active about disasters.