4 May 2026, Apia, Samoa - In a special visit to SPREP, the delegation of Wallis and Futuna met with the senior leadership team at the SPREP Headquarters in Samoa. Wallis and Futuna are the incoming Chair of the 5th SPREP Executive Board Meeting that will convene in Samoa on 24 and 25 August 2026. The Chair of the 32nd SPREP Meeting in 2025 was Vanuatu.
The delegation was led by Mr. Jean Paul Mailagi, elected member of the Regional Commission, and accompanied by Mr. Sosefo Motuku, Chair of the Committee for Infrastructures, Planning and Environment; Ms Ateliana Maugateau, Head of Environment Department; and Mr Ernest Fuimaono, Technical Officer for the Committee for Infrastructures, Planning and Environment.
Mr. Jean Paul Mailagi expressed gratitude to the Secretariat for the warm welcome to SPREP and the importance of agencies like SPREP working with territories to help address their environmental needs. Important initiatives for nature based solutions like the Pacific Ecosystem-based Adaptation to Climate Change (PEBACC+) project, funded by the Kiwa Initiative and the French Facility for Global Environment, as well as the vast work on invasive species completed through the EU funded PROTEGE Project and the Pacific Regional Invasive Management Support Services (PRISMSS), were highlighted as positive examples of work actioned on the ground with local authorities, communities and private sector in Wallis and Futuna.
Mr. Sefanaia Nawadra, Director General of SPREP acknowledged the responsibility of the Secretariat to help prepare Wallis and Futuna for the role of the incoming Chair of the 5th SPREP Executive Board Meeting. The visit to SPREP forms part of a series of meetings to help familiarise Wallis and Futuna with the core business of SPREP in the lead up to the Troika Meeting on 6 and 7 May and the 5th SPREP Executive Board Meeting in August 2026. Mr. Nawadra shared that the SPREP Troika plays a crucial advisory role to the SPREP Executive, and consists of the past, present and future Chairs of the SPREP governing council, which in 2026 is made up of Vanuatu, the United Kingdom and Wallis and Futuna.
Mr. Jean Paul Mailagi noted the parallel values with SPREP, that Wallis and Futuna place on people, the land, sea and environment and that they are honoured to take on the role as the incoming Chair of the SPREP Executive Board and help contribute to SPREP’s governance given the shared challenges and priorities aligned with the SPREP mandate. It was also shared that for more effective engagement, the role of the French language for communication was essential, which Mr. Nawadra acknowledged was a challenge for the Secretariat with only a few French speaking staff. It was noted as an area that the Secretariat would need further assistance with to address and would prioritise, where appropriate in the recruitment process.
In recognising the challenges Mr. Nawadra noted that projects such as the Sustainable Waste Actions in the Pacific (SWAP-2) funded by the Agence française de développement (AFD, the French Development Agency) were important to address the waste management and environmental challenges in Wallis and Futuna and help strengthen working relationships.
The delegation toured the SPREP campus including the Pacific Climate Change Centre and met with staff from the Strategic Planning, Partnership and Resource Mobilisation Department, the Invasives Species team of the Biodiversity Conservation Programme, the Climate Change Resilience Programme and the Climate Science and Information Programme.
