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This is an educational audio presentation by Dr. Patrick Nunn of the University of the South Pacific’s Geography Department. In it, he explains the fundamentals of the greenhouse effect—how greenhouse gases like CO₂ trap heat in Earth’s atmosphere—and outlines its critical role in moderating global temperatures. Dr. Nunn connects this science to the Pacific context, discussing the region’s vulnerability to rising temperatures, sea-level rise, and changing weather patterns. He emphasizes the importance of understanding the greenhouse effect for local climate adaptation strategies and policy planning across Pacific Island nations, drawing on research and climate modeling relevant to the South Pacific.

environmental change has been associated with human mobility over the years and climate change is starting to affect movement in new ways, now termed climate mobility. In this research brief, the effect of climate change on women and persons with disability in Fiji, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu is examined with emphasis on human mobility.

Anthropogenic climate change and its consequences affect human mobility patterns, such as migration, displacement, autonomous and planned relocation and immobility both voluntary and involuntary.

Pacific regionalism has long attracted both hope and despair. The hope is that regional organisations can overcome the challenges of small island developing states (SIDS)

South Tarawa’s water resources are highly stressed due to the capital’s small land area, lack of natural water storage, competing land uses, and densely populated urban environment. Kiribati already faces significant challenges from oceanic and meteorological conditions, all to be exacerbated by climate change. Sea level rise is of particular concern. Sea water over topping will increasingly threaten the fresh water stored in the groundwater lenses, and sea level rise will also exacerbate existing seasonal conditions such as heavy rains and king tides4 that affect access to safe water

This edition of The State of Agricultural Commodity Markets focuses on the complex and underexplored intersection between agricultural trade, climate change and food security. It is clear that we cannot tackle hunger without finding adaptation and mitigation solutions to climate change in agriculture and food systems. It is also clear that the uneven impact of climate change across regions and countries, and the corresponding changes in food availability and access will affect international trade patterns and trade routes. This report supports these discussions by providing an in-depth analysis of the Paris Agreement and the WTO agreements to enhance clarity and provide guidance on policy options that could strengthen the mutually supportive role of these accords in tackling climate change and hunger. Wide-ranging policy actions are necessary to ensure that trade will contribute to the efforts aimed at ensuring food security and promoting adaptation and mitigation to climate change. The uneven impact of climate change across the world and its implications for agricultural trade, especially for developing countries, underlines the need for a balanced approach to policies, which should enhance the adaptive role of trade, while supporting the most vulnerable.

The effects of climate change require strong actions from policy-makers, extension officers and communities to strengthen resilience to the expected negative impacts. Sea-level rise, changes in precipitation patterns and other effects cannot be avoided, but there are many means to reduce the vulnerability of communities. To equip the actors in this adaptation process with the right tools, the Regional Programme on Adaptation to Climate Change in the Pacific Island Region is setting up a knowledge management system including a database on climate change. A collection of best practices from the region and other parts of the world will be part of this venture. The collection of best practices from the region will be completed by the thematic teams of SPC Land Resources Division. This desk-study gathers examples from across the globe.

From the melting glaciers of Nepal and Tibet to the low-lying atolls of the Pacific Islands, like in the Solomon Islands, the impact of the climate change is taking its toll o

Plants, birds, insects, mammals, amphibians and fishes are rapidly responding to the observed changes in climate everywhere on the planet. Extreme high temperatures immediately result in hefty responses. The responses, however, significantly differ from species to species and from year to year, which complicates a clear attribution of causes. The ecological impacts are nowadays visible everywhere through changes in the timing of life cycle events and the geographic distributions of species. Plants have advanced flowering by up to 30 days and are now doing so at dates never documented in the last two centuries. Some species show a dramatic increase in range area, disrupting ecosystems like, for example, the rapid spread over millions of hectares of the Mountain Pine Beetle in North America and the northward expansion of the Oak Processionary caterpillar in The Netherlands. Also fires have increased catastrophically in tropical wet forests during the severe droughts of the El Niño years in the nineties. Other species show a dramatic decrease in distribution or population sizes, illustrated by bleaching corals and disappearing amphibians worldwide. Warm winters, hot summers, excessive precipitation and extended droughts are weather events that trigger these responses

Observational records and climate projections provide abundant evidence that freshwater resources are vulnerable and have the potential to be strongly impacted by climate change, with wide-ranging consequences for human societies and ecosystems. Observed warming over several decades has been linked to changes in the large-scale hydrological cycle such as: increasing atmospheric water vapour content; changing precipitation patterns, intensity and extremes; reduced snow cover and widespread melting of ice; and changes in soil moisture and runoff. Precipitation changes show substantial spatial and inter-decadal variability. Over the 20th century, precipitation has mostly increased over land in high northern latitudes, while decreases have dominated from 10°S to 30°N since the 1970s. The frequency of heavy precipitation events (or proportion of total rainfall from heavy falls) has increased over most areas (likely). Globally, the area of land classified as very dry has more than doubled since the 1970s (likely). There have been significant decreases in water storage in mountain glaciers and Northern Hemisphere snow cover. Shifts in the amplitude and timing of runoff in glacier- and snowmelt-fed rivers, and in ice-related phenomena in rivers and lakes, have been observed (high confidence).