Search the SPREP Catalogue

These guidelines have been developed to assist CARICOM and SPREP country practitioners with the integration of climate change adaptation considerations into the environmental impact assessment (EIA) process, thereby ensuring the selection and implementation of feasible options for development projects. The guidelines adopt a risk management approach for dealing with the existent uncertainties associated with the present status of our knowledge to climate change.

Water resources on coral atolls are from ground water lenses. These lenses are extremely fragile and in many areas very limited in magnitude. Water lenses are also primary longterm water storage facility for many people. The quality of the lens is dependent on rainfall and the width of the land. From this, it is clearly evident that water resources in Kiribati would be threatened by climate change involving more frequent (shorter with severer impacts) or longer duration droughts and coastal erosion

Coral reefs represent some of the most biologically diverse ecosystems on Earth, providing critical habitat to approximately 25 percent of marine species. In addition, these ecosystems provide economic benefits through tourism and fisheries. One recent estimate valued the annual net economic benefits of the world’s coral reefs at $30 billion. However, human activities including development in coastal areas, over-fishing, and pollution have contributed to a global loss of over 10 percent of these valuable ecosystems. An additional 15 percent have been lost due to warming of the surface ocean, and climate change will further contribute to coral reef degradation in the decades ahead.

Plants, birds, insects, mammals, amphibians and fishes are rapidly responding to the observed changes in climate everywhere on the planet. Extreme high temperatures immediately result in hefty responses. The responses, however, significantly differ from species to species and from year to year, which complicates a clear attribution of causes. The ecological impacts are nowadays visible everywhere through changes in the timing of life cycle events and the geographic distributions of species. Plants have advanced flowering by up to 30 days and are now doing so at dates never documented in the last two centuries. Some species show a dramatic increase in range area, disrupting ecosystems like, for example, the rapid spread over millions of hectares of the Mountain Pine Beetle in North America and the northward expansion of the Oak Processionary caterpillar in The Netherlands. Also fires have increased catastrophically in tropical wet forests during the severe droughts of the El Niño years in the nineties. Other species show a dramatic decrease in distribution or population sizes, illustrated by bleaching corals and disappearing amphibians worldwide. Warm winters, hot summers, excessive precipitation and extended droughts are weather events that trigger these responses

"We don’t want to leave this place. We don’t want to leave, it’s our land, our God given land, it is our culture, we can’t leave. People won’t leave until the very last minute.” With these dramatic words, Paani Laupepa, the former assistant secretary at Tuvalu's Ministry of Natural Resources, Energy and Environment, expressed the feelings of many Tuvaluans when it comes to the worst-case scenario of climate change and its effects on small island nations. The scenarios and warnings of international scientist on climate change and its inevitable consequences must be like a constant Damocles Sword for the inhabitants of Tuvalu. For the 21st century, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that there will be a warming of global temperatures and a rise of the sea level by up to almost one meter.

Climate change adaptation is vital for Pacific SIDS. Long-term effects, including the increasing frequency and severity of extreme events such as high rainfall, droughts, tropical cyclones, and storm surges are affecting the people in this region. Coupled with non-climate drivers, such as inappropriate land use, overexploitation of resources, increasing urbanization and population increase, development in the region is increasingly undermined. For the low lying atolls, the likely economic disruption from climate change pressures could be catastrophic and potentially lead to population relocation and therefore social and cultural disruption and disproportion. Failure to reduce vulnerability may result in loss of future risk management opportunities when impacts may be greater and options fewer.

Specifically the Community Vulnerability and Adaptation Assessment was conducted to make it possible for the people of Aitutaki to tell the CBDAMPIC project team what climate related problems Aitutaki may be experiencing, and to gather ideas of how to cope with climate related issues both now (climate variability) and in the future (climate change) at the local level. The CBDAMPIC project is striving to be more than a study, and to actually implement a community identified adaptation option. Therefore this report will serve as a basis for identifying practical and locally appropriate solutions that can be implemented as a pilot adaptation project funded through CIDA. The report also provides a tangible outcome of the community consultations that the Aitutaki people can respond to and explore further.

This paper seeks to find a relationship between the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) variability and crop production. Precipitation and mean temperature were examined first to establish an ENSO relationship while primary sector macroeconomic and crops data were analyzed to note any significant variations in output linked to ENSO impacts of significant occurrence. Institutional strengthening and improved access to markets, both local and regional, and sector development programmes however have made this assessment difficult. Subsistence agriculture (and fisheries), said to the backbone and economic mainstay of Samoa’s primary sector, ideally the best source of ENSO impacts unfortunately remains the data poor sector.

United Nations Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) (1993) United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (1993) Montreal Protocol on substances that deplete the ozone layer (1994) Vienna Convention for the protection of the ozone layer (1994) Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna & Flora (CITES) (1989) Convention on the Prohibition of Fishing with Long Drift Nets (1991) United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)(1982) Rio Declaration on Environment and development and AGENDA 21 (1992) Barbados Plan of Action (1994) Protocol of 1978 Relating to the International Convention for the Protection of Pollution from ships (1989) International Convention on the Establishment of an International Fund for compensation for Oil Pollution Damage (1989) International Convention for the prevention of Pollution of the sea by Oil (1983) International Convention on the Civil Liability for Oil Pollution Damage

Coral reef monitoring lias been an on-going activity in Samoa since 1997. In 1998. a pilot Village Level Coral Reef Monitoring Project (VLCRMP) was initiated in collaboration between The Fisheries Division, the Division of Environment & Conservation and the International Ocean Institute – Pacific Islands. The pilot project provided monitoring equipment and assisted in training the trainers that, in nuns trained 46 villagers from six villages selected from around the country ( Mulipola 2001 ). As a result of the project, several communities have members that are now equipped with the monitoring techniques and they are collaborate with staff of the FD implementing the monitoring of coral reefs in the established community-owned fish reserves.