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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.

A community of living things, along with its surroundings, is referred to as an ecosystem. An ecosystem often takes its name from the most common, or most obvious, thing present. The parrotfish shown in Figure 1.1, for example, is said to be part of the coral reef ecosystem.

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