On the evening of Monday, 7 April 2025, Cenon Pandolina—GEF7 Project ENUA’s Biodiversity Specialist consultant —arrived in Rarotonga for his first official visit in support of the Project ENUA workplan.
Project ENUA (Enhancing Nature’s Unique Areas) aims to reduce, and mitigate negative environmental and social impacts of the key development sectors (agriculture, infrastructure, tourism) in the Cook Islands, which are the main national drivers of biodiversity and habitat degradation.
Based in the Philippines, Cenon was engaged by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and has been working remotely with the Project ENUA team since January through weekly Zoom meetings. These sessions focused on drafting, developing and reviewing a series of Terms of References (TORs) for local consultants to support the delivery of GEF7 Project ENUA activities.
Upon arrival, Cenon met with the NES Environmental Partnerships and Project ENUA team to coordinate a schedule of in-country activities. Tuesday was dedicated to internal meetings, and on Wednesday, Project ENUA Officers Fred Nicholas and Lydia Sijp accompanied him on site visits to key locations of project implementation activities. These included the Takitumu Conservation Area (TCA)—an officially recognized Other Effective Conservation Measure (OECM) site and the first of its kind in the Cook Islands and Pacific region —along with the Avana water intake, catchment area and the Avana Harbour estuary.
On Thursday, 10 April, internal training was conducted with the Project ENUA team on Management Effectiveness Tracking Tools (METTs), which form part of the project’s monitoring and evaluation methodologies, as well as a stakeholder and partnership meeting with Cook Islands Tourism, followed by a meeting on Friday with NES Director Halatoa Fua to discuss progress and ongoing collaboration with the NES team.
The in-country Project ENUA team will now work to finalise the TORs developed and release for advertising to initiate the local consultant recruitment processes. These will be included on the NES website and future Te Kura Tavake editions as well as broader local news platforms. If you’d like more information on these upcoming consultancies, please contact the Project ENUA team on projectenua@cookislands.gov.ck
