The Pacific Urban Forum 2015 met over the last week on the island of Fiji, under the theme of "Towards a New Pacific Urban Agenda: Harnessing Opportunities in a Post-2015 Environment", to discuss how the emerging needs of cities in the region can meet the present challenges.

12 years ago no Pacific country had an urbanisation policy. Now at least four of them do and others are working towards it, driven by the urgency of the need to strengthen disaster and climate risk resilience planning, especially highlighted by the recent devastation caused by Cyclone Pam to Vanutu.

The Forum is a regional triannual event that began in 2003 and gave rise to the Pacific Urban Agenda. It has four priority themes, the second of which is: 'making urban environments risk resilient and greener'. The other three include developing appropriate institutional frameworks; access to service and shelter, including affordable housing; and the urban quality-of-life.

Participating countries include Fiji, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.

As urbanization rates in the Pacific increase they are likely to stabilize at 70-80% according to Professor Rup Singh. The lack of proper policies is what is giving rise to the kind is problems illustrated by the photograph below, of the Solomon Islands, not the kind of picture the tourists normally see in brochures:

There is also an urgent need to upgrade existing informal settlements like the one below on Fiji to protect them from rising sea levels and extreme weather events:

Samoa is taking a lead in urban reform; transforming urban areas with traditional means: Samoan villages make by-laws that encourage new homes to be built on higher land away from risk areas, for example.

At the conference the governor general of the Solomon Islands, Sir Frank Kabui, announced that his government will develop the country's first ever National Urbanisation Policy. Its aim will be to manage and control the rate of urbanisation and support urban and rural dwellers to build affordable housing.

The Fijian Prime Minister made an even more ambitious announcement, to start on the "mammoth task to provide proper and descent housing to more than 10,000 poor or squatter families in Jittu, Wailea, Nanuku and other settlements within the Suva City. It is a work in progress and may take many years but I want to reiterate our commitment today of fulfilling our objectives in improving the lives of all these people".

Amongst topics for discussion were an analysis of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene practice in urban informal settlements in the fall Melanesian countries. Representatives from Fiji, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu, from national and local governments, utilities, NGOs, professionals working in informal settlements, regional organizations and development partners discussed the current water and sanitation situation in Pacific urban settlements, based on a three month assessment and the way forward.

Delicates agreed that there was a need for an integrated water and sanitation approach for informal settlements to be embedded in an over-arching urban development approach and plans as well as a need for redoubling the political will to provide basic services which benefit the urban poor and in particular women and children.

New, appropriate and low-cost technologies and innovative approaches to financing were discussed and the workshop participants committed to piloting and scaling these up.

The current draft of the Sustainable Development Goals were debated, and preparations were made for the New Urban Agenda to be part of Habitat III, the third UN conference on Housing and Sustainable Development that will take place next year.

It will also feed into the Asia-Pacific Urban Forum to take place later this year in Indonesia.