GIS tools important for decision-making
Nimau during his presentation at the conference on Remote Hazard Exposure and Losses to Extreme Wave Levels Exacerbated by Climate-induced Sea-Level Rise in the Vanuatu Islands Context
28 November 2024 - The use of Geographic Information System (GIS) tools and applications are important for addressing key coastal issues, says Johnie Tarry Nimau.
Nimau, the Vanuatu Focal Point for the Pacific GIS and Remote Sensing Council highlighted this during the 2024 Pacific Island GIS and Remote Sensing User Conference themed “Sustainable Management for coastal areas through remote sensing and GIS”.
“Most of the islands are affected by climate change, through sea level rise, and a lot of coastal inundation. These tools and will really help us to address some of these issues in terms of coastal rehabilitation plan,” said Nimau, who is also a Monitoring and Evaluation Officer at the Vanuatu Department of Climate Change.
He acknowledged the importance of having such platforms that are Pacific driven in terms of intra-regional learning and collaboration.
“This platform is very important in terms of information sharing, data management and help people develop different proposal for projects to help address some of these issues,”
“My experience in this kind of conferences leads me a lot in supporting my country, especially the GIS user group and the use of GIS tools and applications that can help inform better decisions planning and planning response to recovery”
“It really helped us also in collaborating with different partners or stakeholders in the use of data and how we utilise, analyse the data and produce products that can help communities to inform sound decisions that can help them in their plannings through disasters and climate change impacts going into the future”
Nimau added capacity-building for such tools are critical to ensure sustainability and local ownership.
“Some projects introduce these tools and when they go back, everything collapses. Its good to upskill Pacific Islands GIS user group to engage and ensure they have the knowledge to utilise these tools in their home countries,”
Nimau while reflecting on the theme for the conference shared support provided by technical partners through projects such as the Management and Conservation of Blue Carbon Ecosystems (MACBLUE) project are a bonus.
“Low carbon development is a priority for Vanuatu, and we are so fortunate to have MACBLUE to address that priority. Its very important to capture mangroves and seagrass,”
“As we know, these two species are so important to the marine and coastal livelihoods. MACBLUE will be good in terms of mapping some of these areas that needs rehabilitation and that can be replicated in some other areas to support marine life,”