8 August 2025
Preparing with partners in calm to respond in crisis – that was the key takeaway from an oil spill response disaster management workshop held in Papua New Guinea (PNG) as part of Exercise Pacific Partnership 2025.
Partners from PNG, Australian and United States governments, the ADF, the US Defense Force and industry exchanged knowledge, solved problems and built enduring relationships over the four-day workshop in Port Moresby in July.
Royal Australian Air Force officer Flight Lieutenant Emily Chapman, of the Australian Civil-Military Centre, said the workshop was an invaluable piece of the broader humanitarian assistance and disaster relief puzzle that would allow key players to work together seamlessly should disaster strike.
“Often we find during disaster responses one of the main characteristics of effective communication and coordination is relationships,” Flight Lieutenant Chapman said.
“These workshops are critical in building those connections to local leadership and to local knowledge that is then used during disaster response.
“It is critical to build shared preparedness and capacity to respond, and that includes informing people how to request international assistance and then how international assistance is integrated into their local and national plans and structures.”
'We’ve learnt a lot in the event that something happens and we can now organise and put in place something so that our international partners can come in and work with us.'
PNG’s National Maritime Safety Authority (NMSA) Marine Environment Protection manager Pawa Limu said while PNG was prepared with the right equipment to respond to a major oil spill in the region, the past experience of partners in reacting to these events would help shape an effective response.
“Our friends from Australia and the US, they have responded to major incidences and they have shared with us what difficulties they have gone through, such as communication barriers in responding to incidents in other countries,” Mr Limu said.
“We’ve learnt a lot in the event that something happens and we can now organise and put in place something so that our international partners can come in and work with us.
“Having the equipment is one thing, but training is what we need and this training workshop has given us the opportunity to see how we can deploy our equipment. We would like to encourage and promote such engagements going forward and have similar training and workshops.”
Facilitated by the Center for Excellence in Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance, the workshop included studying past responses to oil spills in the region, examining and understanding the governance around disaster response in PNG, planning for future potential occurrences, a site visit to examine NMSA’s response equipment, and tabletop exercises to test current systems and understanding.
Exercise Pacific Partnership 2025 is the US Navy’s largest annual humanitarian assistance and disaster relief mission conducted in the Indo-Pacific region. The ADF’s participation contributes to a prosperous and resilient Pacific region, enables interoperability across participating nations and enhances disaster response capability.
