Search the SPREP Catalogue

Cook Islands Statement at the Whales in a Changing Ocean Conference, Vava'u, Tonga

PACC reports

Reports from the PACC project

Water is a taonga – a treasure, essential for life. Water is a resource, a vital input for agricultural production and manufacturing. Rain, rivers and lakes are sources of inspiration and creativity. Water permeates ecosystems, jurisdictions, and communities, linking complex and emergent social, cultural, technological and economic systems. Globally, droughts, changing rainfall patterns, increasing demands for irrigation and the modification of great rivers through dams are part of a water crisis that no one individual, group, sector or state can resolve alone. In response, integrative, adaptive and participatory approaches to water resource management are increasingly suggested as solutions on the basis that water means many things to many people

Technical report

More than 30 years of scientific evidence shows the trajectory that the developed world and New Zealand have pursued up till now cannot be sustained. Over the last two years the warning signals have become increasingly tangible: the collapse of banking institutions worldwide, melting Arctic sea ice, volatile oil prices as global supplies diminish, and the risk of water wars, domestically and internationally, that hides deeper issues of food security