The Pacific Humanitarian Warehousing Program (PHWP), being implemented across 15 participating countries1, provided a rare opportunity to reimagine how MERL can meaningfully contribute to ensuring sovereign warehouse storage and response capabilities through resilience building in such a disaster-prone, geographically dispersed, and operationally diverse region.
“Working across the Pacific has reinforced what I have observed throughout my career: traditional Monitoring, Evaluation, Research, and Learning (MERL) models often fall short in disaster-prone, geographically dispersed, and operationally diverse contexts. Too often, MERL is treated as a compliance function, tracking indicators and reporting against a uniform model. In the Pacific, where capacities and systems vary widely and climate-related shocks are frequent, these conventional textbook models don't go far enough.” says Mohsin Gulzar, MERL Adviser
Why We Had to Do MERL Differently
Transitioning from inception to implementation and based on country engagements, it became clearer that a "one-size-fits-all" MERL approach would not work. Each country differs in warehousing infrastructure, disaster response systems, data availability, and reporting capacities.
At same time, PHWP operates in a multi-partner environment and expected to manage multiple components: Delivery and Coordination under SPC’s Infrastructure through the Infrastructure Specialist Unit, supplies pre-positioning with the Australian Government’s Humanitarian Logistics Capability, and Systems support via the World Food Programme. In such a multi-actor environment, the importance of a clearly mapped Programme Logic cannot be overstated. This upfront clarity helped us recognise that MERL needs to go beyond tracking outputs. It must enable real-time decision-making, support system-wide coordination, and adapt to local realities.
To navigate these complexities, PHWP adapted to an intentional and contextualised MERL system supported through enhanced and robust programme logic2. The approach was shifted to a two-tiered MERL implementation model that balances regional consistency and recognises the inherent complexity of working across varying levels of institutional and operational capacities, while still maintaining a coherent, program-wide results framework.
- Tier One ensures regional consistency through a shared results framework, including End of Programme Outcomes, Intermediate Outcomes, Outputs, and SMART indicators. This enables cross-country comparability and aggregation of programme-wide impact.
- Tier Two allows for national-level contextualisation. Each participating country has a contextualised Country Implementation Plan supported through a dedicated MERL plan that aligns with its warehousing capacities, national systems, and disaster response capabilities.
Through this, MERL is not just planned as an administrative function or a compliance requirement but conceived as a core enabler of local ownership, systems strengthening, regional preparedness, and evidence-based decision-making.
From Fragmentation to System Maturity
Disaster response is only as strong as its weakest link. If preparedness, SOPs, coordination, or first responder capacities develop in isolation, bottlenecks appear when a disaster strikes. PHWP’s MERL system therefore goes beyond indicator tracking: it assesses systems maturity through structured interventions and tailored assessments.
Also, MERL system will support NDMOs to assess whether warehousing systems are evolving in synchronisation3, and where recalibration is needed. This is pursued through regional coordination (e.g., PIANGO, UNOCHA, Pacific Disability Forum) and coherence with broader initiatives such as PIEMA-II and BSRP-II).
What sets PHWP apart is positioning MERL as a strategic driver of change. It enables agility, contextual adaptation, and continuous alignment with country and regional priorities. Tools such as observation-to-action loops, reflection workshops, simulation drills, and real-time assessments transform MERL into a live process that links evidence with action.
By embedding MERL in Pacific contexts and aligning it with both local realities and regional coherence, PHWP is shaping a sovereign, coordinated, and future-ready humanitarian response system. The journey is evolving, but one lesson is already clear: in climate-vulnerable, complex contexts, MERL must be as dynamic, inclusive, and resilient as the systems it supports.
1 Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea (PNG), Republic of Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu
2 Programme logic is a thinking, planning and implementation tool that describes and diagrammatically represents how a project, programme or strategy intends to impact social, economic and political development in a given country, region or context.
3 Refers to a situation where systems mature as complementary to each other rather developed in isolation at various stages.
