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Many societies have rules rooted in legal tradition that require the sustainable and efficient use of natural resources. The obligation of stewardship is a feature of westernised legal systems. In nations following the common law tradition, the doctrine of waste requires owners of land to use it sustainably. Elsewhere, customary law systems demand strict rules governing the allocation and use of resources. There is, therefore, an existing legal culture into which our generation's obligations towards the world's resources can be set.

The foregoing quotations, those presented to or sanctioned by governments and inter- governmental agencies on the one hand, and those contained in magazines and newspapers (as well as in the local press and on radio) on the other hand, provide one of the contexts for the present study. The effects of such reports on island governments, officials, elders and not the least island residents themselves was, as several Tokelauans told us, one of uncertainty, bewilderment and genuine fear about the future for their families, lands and livelihood. This fear was heightened and reinforced by the experience of two recent storms in Tokelau, Tropical Cyclone OFA in February, 1990 and Tropical Cyclone VAL in December, 1991, which raised in people's minds questions such as: Is this the start of the greenhouse effect? Is the apparent increase in cyclone incidence a consequence of global warming? Will cyclone frequency continue to increase in the future in parallel with sea level rise? These events and questions provide a second local context for this study.

The idea for tills manual has roots in more than 25 years of work interpreting and transferring scientific and technical information for use by policy and decisionmakers. I was privileged to take part in the formulation of the U.S. National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 while Chief of the Environmental Policy Division of the Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress. This law called for the preparation of an environmental impact statement—an action-forcing provision aimed at American government officials. But the concept of a special analysis of the consequences to the environment Of technological change has spread around the world. The cost important result is the availability of information to the public and to managers about natural systems and their behavior which would not otherwise have been gathered and assessed. Now, with environmental impact assessment, decisions about using and protecting the environment are better informed, and public participation is facilitated.

For Pacific SIDS, the need for adaptation to climate change has become increasingly urgent. Long-term climate changes, including the increasing frequency and severity of extreme events such as high rainfall, droughts, tropical cyclones, and storm surges are affecting the lives and livelihoods of people in PICs. Coupled with non-climate drivers, such as inappropriate land use, overexploitation of resources, increasing urbanization and population increase, development in the region is increasingly undermined. For the low lying atolls, the likely economic disruption from climate change pressures could be catastrophic, even to the extent of requiring population relocation to other islands or adding numbers to the Pacific diaspora, with the subsequent social and cultural disruption having unknown proportions. Failure to reduce vulnerability could also result in loss of opportunities to manage risks in the future when the impacts may be greater and time to consider options limited.

Non-friable, corrugated, compressed asbestos-cement sheeting, derived from the NZ Aid refurbishment and renovations programme of schools and other Government buildings on Rarotonga

Status of coral reefs in the Polynesia Mana node is predominantly healthy. There are 6733 km2 of reefs scattered over 347 islands. Most (90%) are healthy, 5% have been destroyed or are at a critical stage and 5% are under threat;Reefs have been degraded around populated areas of Rarotonga (Cook Islands), Tahiti and Moorea (French Polynesia) and South Tarawa (Kiribati);Coral reefs support the livelihoods of Polynesian populations through subsistence fishing in all countries and through tourism and black pearl industries in French Polynesia and the Cook Islands; The main threats to the reefs are global warming for the remote reefs and land- based pollution for reefs near urban areas. Dynamite fishing still occurs in Wallis and Futuna;Reefs are mostly healthy in Wallis and Futuna, Tuamotu-Gambier and the Marquesas Archipelagos of French Polynesia; Reefs have largely recovered from past bleaching events in Phoenix Islands and Tarawa in Kiribati, and reefs are recovering from crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS) outbreaks in Rarotonga (Cook Islands) and from a cyclone in Niue; Reefs are facing a major COTS outbreak in the Society Archipelago of French Polynesia; and Socioeconomic assessments are now being implemented in the region, in parallel with ecological monitoring, to support coral reef management.

Few studies1 have been published on school-based environmental education (EE) in the Pacific islands, and there is little available information on effective initiatives in schools. The key purpose of this study is to review and assess the extent to which EE is being carried out in Pacific Island schools to support ongoing dialogue about environment and sustainable development education at the national, regional and international levels.

In order to identify hotspots in the Cook Islands a meeting of the Cook Islands Water Safety Committee (WSC) was convened on January 26, 2007. As explained in the GEF Diagnostic Report for the Cook Islands (Davie & Parakoti, 2007) it is recommended, in order to minimize duplication of roles, that the WSC forms the IWRM committee used in any GEF project.

This thesis applies an approach of political ecology to analyze environmental change in the Cook Islands in the context of the fiscal crisis of the state in the 1990's. Questions and methods from both human and physical geography are brought to the empirical case. Corruption and financial management surrounding a hotel development on Rarotonga, Cook Islands presents a case of "criminal ecology" This research finds that the Pacific Island state is characterised by thin layers of bureaucracy making it extremely vulnerable to international crime, national debt and environmental change. Structural adjustment placed further pressure on the Cook Islands environment. The significance of this research lies in its illumination of the widening environmental consequences of misguided development and debt.