Catalog

Water Issues in the Pacific

The geographic region of the Pacific refers to the Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian islands in the Pacific Ocean. The total area covered by the region is vast: the Pacific Ocean itself occupies almost one third of the earth's surface. The Pacific islands, however, comprise only 1.3 million square kilometers of land area, of which 70 percent is in Irian Jaya and Papua New Guinea, and 20 percent in New Zealand. The remaining 10 percent of land area is spread over more than 10,000 scattered islands.

There are two main groups: (i) small atolls with severe water shortages and water quality problems and (ii) larger volcanic and high mountainous islands where water is generally abundant. Both have fragile natural resource bases, but suffer to different degrees from inefficiency of water use, overuse of limited groundwater, pollution of both surface water and groundwater bodies, and contamination due to inadequate sanitation and waste management.

The first group—including some of the Cook Islands, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Tonga, and Tuvalu—is deficient in surface water and prone to prolonged droughts (especially Kiribati and Tuvalu). Rainwater collection and storage, supplemented where possible by extracting groundwater from shallow freshwater lenses, present the only real choice. Desalination has been proposed in cases of extreme need, and seawater is sometimes used for sanitation. People generally conserve water and use it sparingly. However, because surface water supplies are highly unreliable and groundwater resources limited, conflicts over ownership and access are increasing. Saltwater intrusion and pollution by human waste are reducing the availability of usable water.

The larger volcanic islands include Fiji Islands, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu. Rainfall and surface runoff are adequate to meet needs, but pollution is a serious problem in urban areas. Villages in riverine and estuarine environments often have poor water quality. Competition for water is intensifying among domestic and industrial uses, irrigation, hydropower, tourism, and recreational uses.

As for many other developing countries, those in the Pacific are hampered by inefficient water utilities that operate in a monopoly regime and do not fully recover costs, depending instead on government and external financing to meet operation and maintenance costs. The utilities exhibit chronic under funding and increasing deterioration of the physical assets, coupled with low operational efficiency and high levels of unaccounted-for water.

ADB is providing loans to improve water supply and sanitation in Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, and Papua New Guinea. These include capacity building elements to (i) improve allocation and management of water resources, (ii) develop skills for financial/managerial autonomy in water supply institutions, (iii) regulate water supply investments and operations, (iv) introduce tariff structures that would recover at least the costs associated with operation and maintenance, (v) establish demand-side management and water conservation, and (vi) monitor water quality and environmental conditions.