About

Kia Orana and welcome to the Emergency Management Cook Islands website (EMCI). As a division of the Cook Islands Office of the Prime Minister (OPM), we endeavor to ensure that we have the right policies, legislation, plans and organizational structures in place to deal efficiently with any national emergency or disaster, including those exacerbated by Climate Change.

One of the challenges is bringing disaster risk management and climate change adaptation to the forefront of our planning. Unfortunately, many agencies do still not view Disaster Risk Management (DRM) and Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) as a priority with the result that they often get pushed to the bottom of the priority list. What is required is a drastic mind shift away from waiting until a disaster happens and acting retrospectively, to becoming proactive in doing what we can to prevent natural and man -made hazards from becoming disasters. If total prevention is not possible, our actions will at least serve to reduce the impact of a disaster if it does happen.