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This report is an outcome of the high degree of cooperation and collaboration that exists between the implementing partners of the Australia Aid-funded Climate and Ocean Support Program in the Pacific (COSPPac). specifically the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM), the Pacific Community (SPC) and Pacific Regional Environmental Programme (SPREP) together with the valuable ongoing support from the national meteorological services in the IS partner countries and territories.

The legend of Maui who fished the atoll of Manihiki is a popular folklore that the people of Manihiki like to depic t, sing and dance about as a reminder of their beginnings. The people of Rakahanga and Mani hiki tell stories when Rakahanga was the main settlement and people travelled to and fro between the two islands mainly to forage for food on Manihiki. However, this practice was discouraged by the missionaries because canoes were getting lost at sea, and so they encouraged the people to settle permanently on the two islands.

Coral reef monitoring on Rarotonga has been ongoing for around20 years, with surveys conducted in 1994, 1999, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2009, 2011, and this present survey in 2014. Results from these surveys showed that the crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS) outbreak that occurred from 1995 to 2001,and to a lesser extent storm surge associated with the 2003 to 2005 cyclone sand several coral bleaching events, were the main causes of the degraded state of Rarotonga's fore reef communities for much of the 2000s. While the 2006 survey indicated that mean hard coral cover for all sites were around 1%, it was noted that conditions were set for recovery to occur. Mean coral cover was around 5%in 2009, around 8% in 2011, and 16% in 2014, which clearly showed that coral communities on the fore reef has been recovering since 2006.In support, coral size class data also showed a significant increase of larger colonies in 2014 when compared with 2006.

Climate change has been the topic of much research in the last few decades, however information on its impacts — particularly on remote small island nations — remain scant. Yet, through centuries of observation of their natural environment, Pacific islanders hold a wealth of knowledge of the sky, land, and sea. Sadly, with a shift towards a more western lifestyle on some of these islands in recent decades, this local knowledge is at risk of being lost because it is not passed down to younger generations; recognizing this, Climate Change Cook Islands of the Office of the Prime Minister conducted a questionnaire survey on most of the Cook Islands from January to April 2014. The aim of the survey was to collect information on changes in various biological and physical systems over people’s lifetimes to understand climate variability in this region.

PACC reports

Reports from the PACC project