Search the SPREP Catalogue

Climate change is often referred to as the defining challenge of our time, and it is well known that Pacific Island States are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change. Indeed, these adverse effects are already very tangible for most communities across the region. Coastal features are visibly changing, with rising sea-levels, higher king tides and storm surges, saltwater intrusion and changing weather patterns posing an increasing threat to the livelihoods of Pacific Island communities. The threats are amplified by extreme weather events becoming more intense and more damaging as a result of climate change, with Cyclone Pam recently causing loss of human life and catastrophic damage in Vanuatu, and to a lesser extent in the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and Kiribati. 2 While communities and governments—assisted by regional, international and nongovernmental organizations—are proactively building resilience and adapting to climate change, there is a real risk of much more severe and damaging impacts materializing in the coming decades.3 The threats are so severe that most, if not all, Pacific Island States face the threat of losing some or all of their habitable territory as a result of climate change, with related risks of the loss of traditional livelihoods and large-scale involuntary displacement

Newsletter on Pacific Libraries

2008 Annual Report for the University of the South Pacific.

Traditionally, Pacific Island people have lived a subsistence lifestyle with taboos and practices that ensured sustainability of resource use. However, modernization with all its implications has reduced the quality of life with problems affecting the very pillars of sustainable development. There are many disadvantages that derive from small size, a narrow range of resources, excessive dependence on international trade, high population density, over use of natural resources, relatively small watersheds, costly infrastructure, fragile ecosystems and high levels of endemism.

Traditionally, Pacific Island people have lived a subsistence lifestyle with taboos and practices that ensured sustainability of resource use. However, modernization with all its implications has reduced the quality of life with problems affecting the very pillars of sustainable development. There are many disadvantages that derive from small size, a narrow range of resources, excessive dependence on international trade, high population density, over use of natural resources, relatively small watersheds, costly infrastructure, fragile ecosystems and high levels of endemism.

This report presents data from the most comprehensive assessment undertaken on differing levels of ecological survey effort employed in Fiji. The four methods examined in order of increasing taxonomic complexity (number of variables or species observed) were FLMMA community monitoring, Reef Check, Akuila Cakacaka's Masters thesis method* and that used by Coral Cay Conservation in Fiji. All of these methods utilise a belt transect underwater visual census methodology with differing lengths of transects though for standardisation, all were set at 20m long by 5m wide by 5m high in this investigation. All methods employed a target species list. Of these target species lists, only the FLMMA methodology observed individuals from all of its target taxa; the other methodologies observed only 67, 70 and 59% of the species included on the target species List for the 'Reef Check method', 'Akuila's method' and the 'Coral Cay method' respectively.

On the 21st of October, 1972, hurricane "Bebe" devas- tated a large part of Funafuti atoll, Ellice Islands. Among the most spectacular geomorphological alterations caused by the hurricane was a storm beach 19 km long, 4 m high and 37 m wide. The amount of coral debris washed up from the offshore coral reefs onto the reef flat was estimated at 2.8 x 10 tons of material (Baines, Beveridge and Maragos, 1974). The oceanside reef communities of the SE and E rim of the atoll had been totally destroyed, and those of the inner reefs of the lagoon side had been heavily damaged. Eight months after the storm a quantitative analysis of the resettlement and recruitment of coral species on 7 reef sections was carried out: the destruction of the biophysiographic zones could be described as increasing from the northern border and also to the W rim of the atoll. Near the centre at Fongafale the lagoon reef flat was covered by thick carpets of the brown alga Dictyota bartaysii, possibly brought about by eutrophication effects. The resettlement of the reef flat by corals began with the recolonization of branching corals as well as regeneration of the very few surviving massive corals: about 80% of the number of new colonies belong to Acropora (mainly A. humilis and A. hyaclnthus), and about 20% to Pocillopora eydouxi, Porltes lutea (?) and some Faviidae. The percentage of the area settled by the massive coral species is, however, greater than that settled by the branching species. Nevertheless, in the long-term, branching corals are expected to have a decisive influence on the future structural and biophysiographic zonation of the reef edge and reef flat, due to their more numerous young colonies, which are evenly scattered over the reef area, and due to their rapid growth rate. Consequently, an Acropora humilis - hyacinthus-community or an Acropora - Pocillopora eydouxi-assemblage can be predicted as the future biophysiographic zone.