Established in 2012 by the Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs in partnership with the US Department of State the Third Country Training (TCTP) Programme.
Two staff from the National Environment Service (NES) Cook Islands were amongst 30 other participants that recently attended the training programme in Singapore last month.
The US- Singapore Third Country Training Program (TCTP) is a partnership between the Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the US Department of State with an aim to serve and conduct capacity-building courses for the ASEAN/ Mekong Region. Established in 2012, the TCTP Programme had been conducting trainings and offering courses covering areas such as Sustainable Development, and Regional Resilience, Disease Outbreak, Biological Threats, Smart Cities, and Intellectual Property Rights. The TCTP participants who attended this training were from both government and non- government sectors such as health, environment and conservation.
It was also the first time for the Programme to extend to the Pacific Islands of which Hayley Weeks and Roselyn Strickland represented the Cook Islands together with other Pacific Islands participants from Fiji, Tonga and Vanuatu. According to the NES participants, the key focus of the training was Environmental Drivers of Health Security covering five key environmental drivers relating to health and the environment. These key themes were, land use change, urbanization and globalization, wildlife trade, trafficking, and markets, climate change, and degraded ecosystem services.
Furthermore, the training involved in- house workshops, lectures and activities delivered by experts from universities and other relevant agencies. Field trips were also organized to the Participants to explore some of Singapore’s national initiatives such as the Waste to Energy Plants and the Marina Barrage reservoir. The Cook Islands acknowledges the sponsors for the opportunity to attend the TCTP and finds the value in learning from each other about the various methods in tackling some of the pertinent global issues affecting human health and the environment.
