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Building Community Resilience in a Complex Setting : Opportunities for Papua New Guinea

World Bank

Published

09 Sept 2026

Coverage

PG

Papua New Guinea (PNG) faces growing climate and disaster risks that threaten its development aspirations, particularly in rural areas where most households rely on climate-sensitive livelihoods. At the same time, institutional fragility, limited service delivery, insecurity, and chronic underinvestment in adaptation constrain the country’s ability to respond effectively. This report examines opportunities to strengthen community resilience through locally led climate action (LLCA), with a focus on empowering local governments and communities to address climate risks while improving alignment with national climate priorities. The study combines desk reviews, stakeholder consultations, institutional analysis, climate finance assessment, and statistical and machine learning approaches to develop climate risk indices and climate risk profiles for Local-Level Governments (LLGs) across PNG. The analysis identifies significant spatial variation in climate risks driven by exposure to droughts, floods, landslides, extreme heat, tropical cyclones, and changing climatic conditions. Provinces including Hela, Enga, Northern (Oro), Gulf, Milne Bay, and the National Capital District face particularly high climate risks, while several high-risk areas also experience elevated levels of conflict, highlighting the need for conflict-sensitive adaptation approaches. The report develops nine climate risk profiles that provide a practical framework for targeting adaptation investments and designing locally appropriate interventions. Findings show that despite a robust national climate policy framework, implementation remains highly centralized and insufficiently connected to local institutions. Local-Level Governments, which are critical for delivering climate adaptation on the ground, often lack the capacity, financing, and technical support needed to fulfill their mandates. PNG also faces a substantial adaptation finance gap and receives among the lowest levels of climate finance per capita in the Pacific. Traditional support systems, including the wantok network, indigenous and traditional knowledge, churches, and community organizations, continue to play an important role in strengthening resilience but are increasingly strained by overlapping climate, conflict, and socioeconomic pressures. The report concludes that building resilience in PNG requires a shift toward locally led, conflict-sensitive climate action that strengthens local governance, improves access to climate information and finance, invests in climate-resilient livelihoods, and enhances coordination across levels of government. Existing community-driven platforms, such as the Rural Service Delivery Project (RSDP), provide promising mechanisms for scaling climate adaptation while fostering inclusive participation, social cohesion, and sustainable development outcomes. By aligning national climate ambitions with local realities and empowering communities as agents of change, PNG can strengthen its capacity to manage climate and disaster risks and build a more resilient future.