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This proposal has been prepared by the Ocean and Islands Programme (OIP) within the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) in collaboration with the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA). It has been prepared in response to an invitation1 from the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) to assist the Cook Islands in deriving coastal related information to underpin and inform climate change adaptation decisions for coastal areas of Mangaia Island.

The Training of Trainers (TOT) Workshop on Rainwater Harvesting took place in Vava'u, Tonga from 12-15 May 2004. Involving community extension workers from the Village Women's Development Programme (VWDP) of the Tonga Community Development Trust (TCDT), the training was based on a participatory approach that emphasised 'learning-by-doing'. Using a step-by-step process, workshop participants were introduced to various participatory tools and took part in participatory activities and exercises that they could potentially use during future training on rainwater harvesting in communities.

At the 3rd World Water Forum held in 2003 in Kyoto, Pacific island country ministers, delegations and representatives of civil society, reaffirmed their commitment to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals and Targets of halving by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation and the World Summit for Sustain- able Development (WSSD) Plan of Implementation.

This consolidated report, for the first semester of 2007, comes out one month late because of the programme coordinator participation and involvement in the preparation of the Towns- ville Forum co-organised by Australia and France in September 2007 (see CRISP Enlightnings and CRISP Partnerships chapters further in this report).

Originating in a French political commitment to contributing to the development of the Pacific Island states, the Initiative for the Protection and Sustainable Management of Coral Reefs in the South Pacific was prepared by the French Development Agency as part of an inter-ministerial arrangement as from 2002, in close collaboration with the Permanent Secretariat for the Pacific (Office of the Prime Minister). A call for proposals was issued in June 2003 and all responding parties were included in the programme architecture, which was finalised in June 2004, for approval in July by the governing bodies of the AFD and French GEF. This programme was given the CRISP acronym from September 2004 onwards and officially launched by the Minister of the Environment and Sustainable Development, M. Serge Lepeltier, at the annual SPREP meeting and Meeting of Ministers of the Environment which was held in Papeete in the same month.