Photo credit: Christy Lorenz
By Christy Lorenz, MIPP
When I first received the news that I would be moving to Fiji to work as a Resilience and Climate Change (RCC) Programme Assistant for UNDP Pacific, my mind went wild with possibilities. Freshly equipped with a Master of International Public Policy degree and brimming with ideas, I was determined to make a profound impact during my time here. I imagined designing cutting-edge early warning systems for disaster preparedness, training women across the Pacific to harness satellite data and serve as community wardens; orchestrating cranes to pour fine white sand onto newly restored coastlines; shaking hands with Fiji’s Minister for Environment and Climate Change (well, that last one actually did happen).
The reality, at least initially, was far less glamorous. In fact, for the first month of my internship, I was relegated to filing duty. It may sound anticlimactic (and I won’t pretend I wasn’t a little frustrated). But in hindsight, it was one of the best ways I could have familiarized myself with the plentiful projects spearheaded by the RCC team—how they are designed, structured, funded, procured, implemented, monitored, and assessed. This administrative crash course was sorely needed. During my first month, the team meetings I attended were almost incomprehensible, as if they were another language; I was bombarded with high-level acronyms and terminology I had never encountered before. For example, a typical phrase in my day-to-day would be something along the lines of: “Can’t meet by EOD, Christy—not with pending Q1 PQAs, AWP and IPSA ToR revisions, MoUs and LoAs, NDC 3.0-aligned ASLs, GCF/GEF pipeline funding, and NIM setup for POIDIER… all before UNFCCC clocks us at COP 30!”
Fast forward four months, and I can now navigate this alphabet soup with relative ease, and my role has grown alongside my knowledge. I primarily support high-level monitoring and oversight within the RCC team, while gradually becoming more involved in projects with direct community impacts. I have conducted project quality assessments, coordinated bi-weekly project manager meetings, and developed systems to strengthen programme transparency, risk management, strategic alignment, and output tracking. One key initiative has been the creation of a Target Dashboard, allowing the Programme Management Unit (PMU) to input quarterly implementation data against annual, midterm, and terminal targets. As someone trained in data-driven policymaking at the Balsillie School, it’s rewarding to see quantifiable and well-evidenced progress, measured not just in numbers but also in photographs, receipts, and testimonials that detail tangible results on the ground.
To name a few other highlights, I also helped to organize an inception workshop for a multi-country biodiversity and ecosystem management project, onboarded personnel to support disaster recovery efforts in Vanuatu after the December 2024 Port Vila earthquake, and supported UNDP Pacific’s coordination on NDC 3.0, working alongside regional organizations to map system-wide support for NDC implementation and identify strategic entry points for UNDP assistance. Meanwhile, I have also been excited to develop a few project proposals, including one related to rural renewable energy expansion in Vanuatu. Contrary to familiar data and spreadsheets, this has certainly been a learning curve: as someone accustomed to global, systems-level thinking, analyzing patterns and politics across vast swaths of time and space, exploring the logistics and minute nuances of community-level interventions has been nothing short of mind-blowing. How to feasibly deploy solar panels to an archipelago consisting of approximately 83 small islands, some of which are volcanic, for example (if you have any idea, please let me know). And in the true spirit of sustainability, never mind their installation, what about their maintenance? Repairs? Eventual disposal?
So while I haven’t made the sweeping, system-level impact I once (maybe a bit naively) imagined, I’m beginning to see that it’s the small details that can matter the most. In today’s project managers’ meeting, for instance, I learned that one of our initiatives sponsored three students from Tuvalu to pursue Master’s degrees in climate adaptation and coastal resilience. This is an enormous achievement. In a region where capacity is a constant challenge, these students now possess the knowledge and the skills to safeguard and scale future adaptation efforts. They may go on to teach, mentor, and lead others, creating a ripple effect that strengthens climate resilience not just in their communities but across the Pacific. It may not be a panacea, but it’s still meaningful progress.
Every day, working with UNDP Pacific has given me plenty to appreciate and reflect on, and I have a few months left to continue figuring it out. Hopefully, that includes the off-grid photovoltaic solar panels.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the BSIA, its students, faculty, staff, or Board of Directors.