| Overview : The Pacific Risk Resilience Programme (PRRP) is concerned with the concept of risk governance in the region. This is the integration of Climate Change and Disaster Risk Management (CCDRM) into routine government and community level needs assessment, planning, budgeting, monitoring and evaluation systems and implementation of development activities in participating countries. This concept is highly relevant in the region as climate change and disaster risk is recognised as a development issue at regional, national and local levels. Relevance of the programme is increasingly evident when considered through the lens of resilient development; localising the SDGs; and gender and social inclusion objectives. PRRP is a five year programme, funded by the Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) with a total budget of AUD$16m[1]. It is due to complete all activities in July 2018. It is delivered through a partnership between UNDP, Live and Learn Environmental Education (LLEE), and four participating countries: Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Tonga and Fiji. The programme has evolved based on emergent design principles selected because risk governance is not a fully developed concept in the region. The programme is built on a cycle of initial testing, learning, adapting and re-testing until a clear design emerges which can then be shared and scaled-up. The programme is currently progressing to a diffusion of learning (sharing) and scaling-up phase. The programme is structured around three end-of-programme outcomes (EOPOs): integration of CCDRM into development at the national level (EOPO 1); integration of CCDRM considerations into sub-national development (EOPO 2); and application of learning generated by the programme for risk governance to internal and external stakeholders (EOPO 3). The programme has evolved based on ‘emergent design’ principles adapted from the implementation of systemic change in education and learning environments. This approach was selected because risk governance is not a fully developed concept in the region. This is not a traditional CCDRM programme where outcomes are predicted against a set of known intermediate steps based on significant previous experience. Instead the concept of risk governance is still emerging in the region. As such the programme design is built on a cycle of initial testing (based on best practices available at the time), learning, adapting and re-testing until a simpler and more easily understood design emerges which could not have been anticipated in advance. Once this occurs then the design and its application are ready for scaling-up. Based on the emergent design approach the programme has evolved through a number of phases. In each phase all major components of emergent design are conducted at the same time but with a particular emphasis on one step of the cycle. Programme activities are currently progressing to the diffusion and scaling-up phase: Definition and inception phase (Nov-12 to Dec-13): key focus on developing partnerships with countries on this new area of work and establishing the team to deliver the programme.This also included some early testing of risk governance initiatives based on an initial design; Testing phase (Jan-14 to Dec-14): characterised by substantive testing based on an initial design and development of more detailed work-plans for each country, and some early diffusion of learning at national and regional level; Learning and adapting phase (Jan-15 to Jan-16): substantive learning based on testing of initial design leading to further refinement of programme design and set-up for next phase; and Diffusion and scaling-up phase (Feb-16 to Jan-18): based on previous phases of PRRP activities more focus on diffusion of learning to external stakeholders at country and regional / global levels.Activities will be more of regional nature but driven by country perspectives. A Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Plan was developed and endorsed in 2014 that is suitable for this type of programming and places a greater emphasis on iterative learning and programming through ‘exploratory evaluations’ as well as a series of traditional indicators. This iterative approach to learning is based on ‘developmental evaluation’ principles (see Gamble, 2008: A Developmental Evaluation Primer). The MTE will build on this approach and propose any necessary adjustments to the MEL plan in light of the emergent design nature of the programme.
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