The overarching aim of this project is to enhance the resilience of the city and its inhabitants to current and future climate impacts and natural disasters.

  • Project dates: 2019 (ongoing)

This project has a particular focus on pro-poor adaptation actions that involve and benefit the most vulnerable communities in the city and a special emphasis on youths, women, girls, the elderly, and people with disabilities. 

The ‘Climate Resilient Honiara’ Project (CRH) is a four-year project funded by the UNFCCC Adaptation Fund and administered by UN-Habitat. RMIT University provides scientific support to a range of different urban climate resilience activities (actions and capacity building). Professor Darryn McEvoy leads the project and a large multi-disciplinary team of lecturers and researchers from six different schools at RMIT. The project also engages with multiple local partners, NGOs and consultants. The project is implemented locally by the Solomon Islands Ministry for the Environment, Climate Change and Disaster Management (MECCDM), the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Survey (MLHS), and Honiara City Council (HCC).

A team of RMIT University engineers, planners and designers are developing Nature-based solutions for adaptability and resilience of five highly vulnerable informal settlements in Honiara, since the project’s commencement in 2019. The team is developing solutions for urban environment based on spatial mappings of disaster risk and, co-design workshops with community during field visits and in consultation with local stakeholders. The team is also developing a professional training course curriculum for land managers from the Solomon Islands.

The report on Work Package 7b: Climate Resilient Spaces – Nature based Solutions (NbS) will be available soon.

Work Package 10: Professional training course

Key People

Mittul Vahanvati

Mittul Vahanvati

Convener of Climate Change Transformations Program

Andrew Butt

Andrew Butt

Associate Dean, Sustainability & Urban Planning

Key people

  • Serene Ho Darryn McEvoy
  • Usha Iyer-Raniga
  • Tariq Maqsood
  • Ata Tara
  • Yazid Ninsalam

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Regenerative Environments and Climate Action

Regenerative Environments and Climate Action brings together our expertise in understanding cities as integral to environmental justice, the need for urgent climate action, improving ecological processes, and connections with more-than-human worlds.

News & Blog

CUR Stories

Comics to communicate climate risks, vulnerability, and adaptation

27 June 2023

The findings from academic research are often not easily accessible to research participants and public audiences. This is problematic in areas like climate change research, where research translation and more widespread dissemination of how best to adapt to climate impacts is vitally important given the scale of challenges being faced, and that those most adversely […]

CUR Stories

Implementing nature-based solutions to reduce climate risks in informal settlements, Solomon Islands

06 December 2022

The Solomon Islands has been identified as one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change, with informal settlements and the urban poor particularly sensitive to weather-related extreme events. A multi-disciplinary scientific team from RMIT University, led by Prof. Darryn McEvoy, is engaged in several projects that aim to increase the climate resilience of marginalised communities in the capital city, Honiara.

CUR Stories

Informal settlements and the threat of climate change

17 March 2022

To ensure that shelters in informal settlements across the Pacific Island region are disaster resilient, policymakers and relief agencies must work closely with local communities to implement sustainable solutions, Darryn McEvoy, Mittul Vahanvati, Deb Kuh, and Usha Iyer-Raniga write.