A selection of islands was chosen for the study, representative of the two main island forms: (i) atolls and limestone islands dependent on rainwater and groundwater – nauru, Majuro Atoll (in Republic of the Marshall islands) and Fongafale islet (Tuvalu); and (ii) volcanic islands with river systems – including Rarotonga (cook islands), Viti levu (Fiji), new Guinea (Papua new Guinea) and Upolu (Samoa).
These guidelines detail the process, timeline, and steps taken to complete a State of Environment Report.
State of Environment (SoE) reports provide in-country partners with a process to gather data on current environmental indicators, document their status, and formulate a plan for keeping these indicators on track or developing policies and programs as needed. This SoE Toolkit dataset contains resources that serve as guides to help create up-to-date State of Environment reports.
UNEP Regional Seas Ports and Studies No. 136.
SPREP Reports and Studies No. 49.
UNEP 1991
Water quality studies in Pacific Lagoons UNEP 1991
This guide assists PICs to build on existing laws and institutions to protect their environments, economies and societies from plastic pollution, improve waste management and recovery, and find alternative and practical solutions to avoidable plastic use.
An overview of the purpose and how Aqua Maps work.
This dataset contains a guide for policy makers and legislative drafters in the context of plastic regulations
Dataset with direct internet link and resources pertaining to AquaMaps. It is an online tool for generating model based, large scale predictions of natural occurrences of species. For marine species, the model uses estimates of environmental preferences with respect to depth, water temperature, salinity, primary productivity, and association with sea ice or coastal areas.
This guide introduces environmental indicators and provides an overview of SPREP’S core indicators for Pacific island countries. In 2012, the SPREP members approved the development of a set of standardised indicators for use by member countries at the SPREP meeting. Through the Inform project, SPREP programmes then developed a set of 34 indicators that was endorsed by members at the 2018 SPREP meeting. This document explains the development and use of environmental indicators in Part 1 and provides a summary of each of the 34 ‘core’ indicators in Part 2.
Scientific published report: Hydrogeology Journal - Feb. 2009
Article - published in 2017
Refer to dataset description for information. Please use this version for double-sided printing.
Please refer to dataset description for further information.
The nature of shallow aquifers and the impacts of seawater intrusion in small islands within the Pacific Ocean are reviewed. Many Pacific islands rely on shallow fresh groundwater lenses in highly permeable aquifers, underlain and surrounded by seawater, as their principal freshwater source. It is argued here that, in small islands, the nature of fresh groundwater lenses and their host aquifers coupled with frequent natural and ever-present anthropogenic threats make them some of the most vulnerable aquifer systems in the world.
Water resources sustainable management is a vital issue for small islands where groundwater is often the only available water resource. Nauru is an isolated and uplifted limestone atoll island located in the Pacific Ocean. Politecnico di Milano performed a feasibility study for the development of sustainable use of groundwater on the island. This paper focuses on the first phase of the study that concerns the conceptual site model development, the hydrogeological characterization and the 2D model implementation.
Government Report to UNCCD - prepared by the Dept. Economic Development and Environment. 2003
The environmental issue of greatest concern to the people of Nauru is the degradation of the mined phosphate lands. In all of the series of consultations that were carried out between the people of Nauru and the various teams of technical experts to ascertain the feasibility of rehabilitating the island, it was constantly emphasised that the total degradation of topside, including localized inland, water shortages and coastal erosions are problems that need to be addressed for sustainable development.
Map of the Nauru Island hydrology feature, Buada Lagoon and areas of land development.