The Chief Executive Officer of the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Labour, Pulotu Lyndon Chu Ling says Samoa is making headway towards environmentally friendly and decent work. 

At the International Labour Organisation knowledge sharing dialogue on just transition, decent work and climate change resilience in the Pacific Islands, Pulotu said he is happy with the progress Samoa has achieved.

He told the Samoa Observer he has enjoyed hearing the best practices in green work shared by the other Pacific nations attending the dialogue, and that more improvements could be made in partnerships.

“I think one of my takeaways is to strengthen partnerships between member countries, development partners and all the stakeholders,” he said.

“Samoa, like other Pacific island countries is a community based economy where most of activities also involve our communities, in the villages as well as the town areas.”

Apart from the potential development of these relationships, Pulotu said Samoa is “already there” in terms of policy.

“I think it’s safe to say the government of Samoa is already making headway to make sure we are not left out in terms of initiatives to improve adaptation and education towards climate change,” he said.

“For example, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, they have done a lot of projects that deals directly with environmental adaptation.”

During the dialogue workshop, the delegates and government representatives, Pulotu included, visited some those projects, including Vaisigano Catchment project and the botanic gardens at Vailima.

“We are making progress in this area, though it is not straight forward,” Pulotu said.

“There is a lot of work that needs to be done, but I think it is also good to know in our own national development policy, the Strategy for Development of Samoa 2017-2020, environment and climate change are core issues.”

Since 2009, Samoa has been running an I.L.O. Decent Work Country Program, new iterations of which began in 2013 and 2017. 

Pulotu said these programmes have helped drive Samoa’s adaptation to environmental changes without sacrificing quality jobs.

“There are three priorities which focus on employment, with reference to green jobs and all that. One of these includes environment and adaptation.”

Ownership is an essential component of any climate change policy however, said Pulotu.

“If our people have that mind-set that they own these activities then the projects that we have in place with be sustainable, with their involvement.”