By Kirsty Needham
SYDNEY (Reuters) -The World Bank has maintained its focus on climate change and gender in the Pacific, managing director of operations Anna Bjerde said on a visit to Australia, even as its largest shareholder the United States reduces aid in those areas.
After meeting Pacific Islands economic ministers in Fiji, Bjerde said countries in the region continued to worry about being exposed to the accelerating effects of climate change, and had grave concerns about food security and rising debt levels. Six Pacific Island countries are at high risk of debt distress, the bank says.
The World Bank is moving a regional vice president from Washington to Singapore, and will move directors from Australia to Fiji and Papua New Guinea to be closer to a $3.4 billion Pacific aid programme that has grown seven-fold in 10 years, she said in an interview on Monday.
“We are committed to designing projects that really take into account the vulnerabilities of countries we work in. In this part of the world, countries are vulnerable to the impact of climate change,” she said.
“We haven’t really changed our language around that,” she added.
Pacific road projects designed to be flood resilient provide better infrastructure that can withstand the changing climate and also be counted in climate finance programmes, Bjerde said.
The World Bank was focussed on boosting women’s workforce participation to help lift the region’s economic growth, she said, after meeting women leaders in Fiji who highlighted the need for childcare so women can work.
On Monday, Bjerde also met officials from the Australian government, the largest bilateral donor to the region.
Under reforms introduced last year by its president Ajay Banga, the World Bank has started to roll out region-wide programmes to have a bigger impact among Pacific countries with small populations.
Eight countries have joined an arrangement that stops small island states being cut off from the international financial system, while a health programme targeting non-communicable disease will potentially reach 2 million people across the Pacific Ocean and train 16,000 health workers. A trade programme is also being designed to give access to goods faster and more cheaply, she said.
(Reporting by Kirsty Needham in Sydney; Editing by Kate Mayberry)
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