Honiara, 25 September 2025 — A multi-stakeholder meeting was convened at the MMERE Board Room to advance conservation efforts in the Upper Tina Catchment (UTC). The session brought together representatives from the Project Office (PO), the Ministry of Environment, Climate Change, Disaster Management and Meteorology (MECDM) – Environment Conservation Division (ECD), and the Concessional Finance Parties (CFPs) Mission Team, from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.
The session acknowledged ECD’s role in protected-area management and addressed practical steps to accelerate work in the UTC, noting documentation gaps (including the absence of formal Protected Area submissions to date), institutional constraints with resources, and emerging pressures from logging, mining and unregulated small-scale activities. Participants discussed the timeline and requirements for Protected Area declaration including biodiversity assessments, tribal boundary agreements and GPS ground-truthing typically taking six to eight months—and considered options to strengthen financing, including progress on the Protected Areas Trust Fund and complementary mechanisms beyond carbon markets, such as tourism, research and social development initiatives. The meeting agreed to deepen tribal engagement, continue secondment discussions between the Project Office and ECD to support transition and knowledge sharing, pursue targeted capacity building, and align with ongoing PES[1] initiatives under the MCC Threshold Programme and Nakau partnership[2]. The partners reaffirmed their commitment to coordinated action to protect approximately thousands of hectares of high-value forest in the Upper Tina Catchment and to strengthen conservation governance in Solomon Islands.
[1] PES initiatives in the Solomon Islands focus on forest and mangrove conservation through carbon offsets and blue carbon projects
For more information, contact:
Communications Officer: Jeanine Gadepeta email: jeanine.gadepeta@tina-hydro.com
Tina Hydropower development project
+677 25133
About Tina River Hydro Development Project (TRHDP)
The first large scale renewable energy project for the Solomon Islands delivering benefits such as more affordable electricity and improved accessibility to cleaner, more reliable energy sources for communities now and in the future. It is being implemented by the Solomon Island Government with financing and support from the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development, the Asian Development Bank, the Government of Australia, the Green Climate Fund, Korea EX-IM Economic Development Cooperation Fund, and the World Bank.
Find out more on www.tina-hydro.com
A National Project of Solomon Islands | Tina River Hydropower Tina River Hydropower is a National Project of Solomon Islands and has as its objective to provide more affordable and reliable energy options to Honiara. www.tina-hydro.com |
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