AS Pacific leaders meet in Honiara for the 54th Pacific Islands Forum, climate action is high on the agenda.
On Wednesday, there will be a treaty signing ceremony to establish the Pacific Resilience Facility (PRF). It’s a new regional fund that aims to build community preparedness and resilience against the impacts of climate change and the frequent disasters that hit the region every year.
It’s been a long time coming – the idea of a Pacific-owned and managed fund for climate finance was floated more than a decade ago. Early preparations were slowed, as donors and some Forum members questioned whether a regional mechanism would duplicate existing multilateral climate funds. Then COVID-19 derailed progress, as international resources were prioritised for pandemic responses.
This week in Honiara, however, there’s a major step forward. Forum members will be invited to sign and ratify a treaty establishing PRF as a legal entity.
“It’s coming alive,” says Finau Soqo.
“This initiative has been 10 years in the making, before the COVID pandemic put us six feet under. The initiative was flatlining then, but here we are, three or four years later and we have a real sense of hope.”
For more than a decade, Soqo was an international banker working in Fiji, Australia, the Philippines and Kiribati, before taking the helm as General Manager of the new regional fund. Speaking to Islands Business, Soqo said: “I was a banker for ANZ for 11 years before the epiphany to apply my talents to a greater cause – addressing the challenge of climate change.”
Soqo said the PRF would prioritise assistance to local communities that are facing the adverse effects of climate change and extreme weather events. The PRF will be built around two pillars. The first will fund projects in adaptation, disaster preparedness, nature-based solutions, loss and damage, and disaster response. The second will address social and community resilience, with resources for training, capacity building, and resilience under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
“PRF was really created for communities, and the small projects that communities need that are often under-served by bigger global climate finance funds,” Soqo explained. “Another special thing about the PRF is that it’s ours. It belongs to the Pacific. It’s co-designed by the Pacific. All 18 members of the Pacific Islands Forum are engaged in the formulation of how we’re going to establish it.”
There have been many delays on the path to this week’s signing ceremony, and there’s more work to be done. At last year’s Pacific Islands Forum in Tonga, leaders agreed that the Kingdom would host the new PRF headquarters, and Soqo says the region is now ready to bring PRF to life. She now has to build beyond current pledges, to create a capital base of $USD500 million by late 2026 before grant allocation can begin in 2027.
Overcoming doubts
Despite advocacy on carbon emissions, adaptation, and loss and damage, the issue of climate finance has been at the heart of Forum lobbying for decades.
Ever since the signing of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992, the provision of climate finance from OECD countries to developing nations has been a central pillar of negotiations at the annual Conference of the Parties (COP). But Small Island Developing States and Least Developed Countries have been forced to fight for recognition of their particular needs, which are different to larger nations in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Many have also faced difficulty accessing financial resources.
There are already an array of global multilateral climate finance mechanisms, from the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and Global Environment Facility (GEF) to World Bank Climate Investment Funds. But when they struggled to access resources from these funds in a timely manner, Pacific leaders and officials began to discuss the idea of a regional fund, controlled by Forum members.
Vulnerable Pacific communities had long called for small-scale disaster preparedness projects, which many donors were reluctant to fund at community level. In 2017, the Forum Economic Ministers Meeting (FEMM) called for a comprehensive look at regional financing models available to cope with disasters, given the catastrophic impacts of cyclones and extreme weather events in the region.
This was followed by years of debate about the structure and priorities of the proposed fund. Some international donors—including the largest Forum members Australia and New Zealand—raised concerns over governance and accountability, and possible duplication of existing climate finance mechanisms.
Today, however, the fund will be overseen by a PRF Council made up of Forum finance ministers (with the added ability to co-opt climate ministers). There will also be a smaller PRF Board to set policy and oversee the Tonga-based Secretariat.
“Strengthening the governance of PRF was one of the key things that gave Australia comfort,” Soqo said. “One of the things that we’ve landed on—I think correctly—is a seven-to-nine-member independent PRF Board. This allows the separation of the political role of the PIF from this international financial institution, even though PRF still belongs to the members as part of the Forum family. “We’ve also got Forum finance ministers on the PRF Council, but with the ability to co-opt the climate and disaster ministers as well.”
Community focus
The new facility will be built around four core funds: an investment fund; an operations and disbursement fund for community resilience; a contingency fund; and a disaster response fund.
“The way that we’ll be able to access funds will be tailored to our needs and according to our own landscape,” Soqo explained. “We have three ways to implement grants: one is through governments; two is through partners; and three is direct to communities. For this third modality, the PRF may need to experiment with different concepts. With international NGO organisations operating in the region, it’s important that they don’t crowd out local groups, or the sub-national NGOs where we want to build capacity.”
Civil society and church groups have cautiously welcomed the new initiative, but have stressed the importance of community involvement in the design, operation, and monitoring of the fund.
Dr Sindra Sharma of the Pacific Islands Climate Action Network (PICAN) said: “Channelling finance directly into the PRF is good, but we still need to know more about how the PRF will actually serve communities that are on the frontline, as we rapidly reach the 1.5-degree target.
“We hope the PRF has the ability to reach directly into communities and that—importantly—it is driven by communities and their needs,” Sharma added. “This is something that is critically missing in the finance architecture that we have, including development finance. However, when you’re going to keep polluting but then give us money to keep us in a constant cycle of recovery, that’s not going to help us. Unless the PRF is backed with the global emissions reductions that we need to see, we’re not going to progress.”
Reverend James Bhagwan, General Secretary of the Pacific Conference of Churches, noted that “in 2020, civil society and church groups launched the idea of a community-led funding facility. This is one of our concerns – within the PRF, where is the voice and oversight role for civil society about where the money goes?”
Green Climate Fund continues
The Green Climate Fund (GCF) is the world’s largest climate fund, and even with the creation of the PRF, it continues to operate in the islands’ region. Last February, for example, the GCF endorsed a $USD156.8 million project to support 14 island nations adapt to the impacts of ocean warming on the tuna stocks. The multi-country project, managed with the Pacific Community (SPC), includes a $USD107 million grant.
Vice President of Kiribati Teuea Toatu, who is also Minister for Finance and Economic Development, is currently the Small Islands Developing States (SIDS) representative on the GCF Board. Alongside international bodies like the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Asian Development Bank and Nature Conservancy, there are six Pacific SIDS accredited entities eligible to apply to the GCF for grants, including Pacific Regional Environment Program (SPREP), Pacific Community (SPC), Fiji Development Bank, FSM Development Bank, and Micronesian Conservation Trust.
At the July Forum Economic Ministers Meeting, Vice President Toatu outlined GCF plans to establish a network of regional offices around the world, to strengthen accessibility and speed up the application process. On behalf of the Pacific, Fiji plans to bid to host the GCF Regional Office in Suva.
But for Finau Soqo, “the PRF has been created with a community mandate in mind, through small grants at scale, so the business model is quite different to the GCF.
“A key point of difference is that the GCF is made for the bigger projects while the PRF is for small-scale community grants,” she explained. “They’re so big, they will not be able to do the small grants; they’re not created for that. The mandate is definitely different – where they stop, PRF will start.
“The other key difference is that they have a global mandate, whereas the PRF is just for Forum Island Countries. This is important because automatically, we can reduce the traffic jam of applications, because it’s just within the region.”
Show me the money
In the early days of designing the PRF, there were ambitious plans to create a $USD1.5 billion capital base, together with support for initial administrative costs. But plans to launch fundraising were delayed during the COVID pandemic, and targets have been scaled back, for now.
Opportunities to raise funds for development and climate action have also been transformed by today’s warfare and strategic competition: the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza; the Trump administration’s gutting of USAID and other development agencies; and cuts to development aid and climate finance by major OECD countries like Germany and the United Kingdom.
Finau Soqo acknowledged the challenge of fundraising in such times, “but the reality of the fundraising landscape is a tension that we can’t run away from. These are the times we’re living in, with the catalytic posture of the United States and other competing interests reshaping the geopolitical landscape. However, in my mind, there’s a very compelling case for the Pacific – especially against the backdrop of the Review of Regional Architecture.”
As the Forum reviews its engagement with international partners, it stresses the centrality of the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent and the PRF as a Pacific-led climate and disaster initiative.
Two years ago, the 2023 Forum Foreign Ministers Meeting proposed that as a criterion for obtaining Dialogue Partner status, applicants should make a financial contribution to the PRF. In response, Saudi Tourism Minister Ahmed Aqeel Al-Khateeb announced a $USD50 million grant to the PRF at the Rarotonga Forum leaders meeting that November.
The PRF has now received initial pledges from a diverse range of partners, including Australia ($AUD100 million), China ($USD500,000) and the United States ($USD5 million for administrative preparations). Nauru also pledged $AUD1 million, as a symbol of Pacific ownership of the initiative.
Since then, New Zealand pledged $NZD20 million in October 2024, while Germany committed €3 million. Last March, Japan announced an initial contribution of 417,000,000 Yen (around $USD3 million), during a visit to Tokyo by Forum Secretary General Baron Waqa. At the June 2025 UN Ocean Conference in Nice, France committed €2 million while Ireland has also proposed an (unannounced) pledge.
“Of course, the funding commitments are a bit slower than we had hoped,” Soqo told Islands Business. “But the current $USD162 million total is from 10 sovereign investors, fundraised over 16 months since the 52nd Forum Leaders Meeting in the Cook Islands where the first pledges were received.”
Soqo said that others investors were considering support, but “sovereign investors are also major billion-dollar funders for the global vertical funds like GCF, and they are testing the water with the PRF because our model is fundamentally different. Our region is very grant-dependent, so for investors to put grants into the PRF that we can then invest and generate a return to help communities – it’s a novel model.
“For donors, they also want to know if money put into the PRF can be counted against their commitments to the UNFCCC or Official Development Assistance,” she explained. “Investors are dipping in their toes, but it takes time for them to get through approvals. We want to give enough notice to funders to have a target, and to tell them about the things we are going to do.”
Promoting the PRF
Following this week’s summit in Honiara, Soqo will hit the road to promote the PRF at a range of international meetings. There will be a PRF Talanoa with donors on the sidelines of the 80th session of the UN General Assembly in September, then it’s on to the annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington in October. The next UNFCCC Conference of the Parties, in Brazil in November, is yet another opportunity to raise the PRF’s profile.
Soqo is also watching for the outcome of the long running tussle between Australia and Türkiye to host COP31 in late 2026. At their July meeting, Forum Economic Ministers “noted the significant benefits that a Pacific COP31 would have in terms of visibility and advocacy for the PRF.”
“If we have a Pacific COP with Australia in 2026, it’ll be amazing and will elevate our efforts,” Soqo said. “But whether we get COP31 or not, we still have to raise $USD500 million. Whether it’s Australia or Türkiye or they settle for a third country because of a stalemate, my mindset is clear: whatever happens, we still need to find a way to reach our $USD500 million target. That’s why we need strong momentum this year.”
At this week’s Forum in Honiara, the signing ceremony on Wednesday will be an opportunity for Forum members to step up. At least half of the 18 members are likely to sign the establishment treaty, and a few may announce their ratification. Others need to finalise local Cabinet or parliamentary approval before signing on in coming months.
“We’ve got strong momentum from members for their readiness to sign the treaty in Honiara,” Soqo said. “But we need eight ratification instruments to be deposited in order for the PRF treaty to enter into force. We’re working firstly with countries that can gain Cabinet approval, and for others to come later.”