What is PIEMA – the Alliance

Established in 2013, the Pacific Islands Emergency Management Alliance (PIEMA) is a partnership between the key emergency management agencies in the Pacific – the National Disaster Management Offices (NDMO), Police and Fire and Emergency Services – to improve coordination and create ‘excellence in emergency management for safer Pacific communities’.

The Strategic Agenda 2020, developed and endorsed by Pacific Island Countries and Territories in 2015, articulates the objective of PIEMA and responds to the need to have a regional coordination mechanism for emergency management. Recent natural disaster events in the Pacific have seen the capacity brought to bear by armed forces (Tonga, Fiji and PNG) to deliver immediate life-saving assistance.  In response, PIEMA has evolved to see the armed forces as a core partner of the Alliance, both at the national and regional levels. With governments in the Pacific having limited financial and human resources, pooling the resources from key these agencies is an efficient and effective solution when responding to disasters. PIEMA is unique in its ability to deliver efficiencies through enabling Pacific exchanges, supporting localisation and facilitating regional surge support in line with regional platforms, such as the Boe Declaration and Framework for Resilient Development in the Pacific.