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The world is facing a global water quality crisis. Continuing population growth and urbanisation, rapid industralisation, and expanding and intensifying food production are all putting pressure on water resources and increasing the unregulated or illegal discharge of contaminated water within and beyond national borders. This presents a global threat to human health and wellbeing, with both immediate and long term consequences for efforts to reduce poverty whilst sustaining the integrity of some of our most productive ecosystems. There are many causes driving this crisis, but it is clear that freshwater and coastal ecosystems across the globe, upon which humanity has depended for millennia, are increasingly threatened. It is equally clear that future demands for water cannot be met unless wastewater management is revolutionized.

This proposal has been prepared by the Ocean and Islands Programme (OIP) within the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) in collaboration with the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA). It has been prepared in response to an invitation1 from the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) to assist the Cook Islands in deriving coastal related information to underpin and inform climate change adaptation decisions for coastal areas of Mangaia Island.

The Micronesia Challenge was launched in 2006 with a general but ambitious goal to “effectively conserve at least 30% of the near?shore marine resources and 20% of the terrestrial resources by 2020” for the five MC jurisdictions. To meet this goal, government and non?government agencies across the MC region, along with MC regional and international partners, have been working together to formulate a monitoring framework that will provide the guiding structure, direction, guidelines and tools (or methods) on how we can realistically implement our respective conservation strategies at the jurisdictional level and measure conservation progress at a regional level.   

The UNCCD has developed a new monitoring and reporting system to track and evaluate progress of its implementation through its Ten Year Strategic Plan and Action Framework 2008-2018. The new monitoring system called UNCCD PRAIS is an online monitoring, assessment and reporting system. It is being rolled out through a two year GEF-funded project by the UNCCD Secretariat through a contract with UNEP-WCMC.

This report is prepared to highlight and share with the wider UNCCD stakeholders some of the key and valuable lessons learned from the experiences of the Pacific Island Countries and region. The report encapsulates the different experiences gained by the Reference Centre, National Focal Points, Country Teams and key regional organisations in the Pacific who were involved in the process for the preparation of the fourth national reports to the UNCCD through the new reporting portal and monitoring system referred to as the PRAIS. The lessons learned report covers the period from June to November of 2010. The report is based on empirical observations from the UNCCD PRAIS Pacific regional training on 12-16 July 2010; the in-country PRAIS trainings held in Samoa, Kiribati, Niue and Nauru from 8 September to 28 October; and a review of electronic correspondence between the Reference Centre and country parties in the Pacific on the preparation of their CCD reports using PRAIS.

Technical report