State of Freshwater Resources in the Pacific

Abstract

The freshwater resources of Oceania are highly variable, comprising some of the global extremes in terms of availability and access. The Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs) have lower water security than Australia and New Zealand, the two developed nations in the region. Among PICTs, whilst surface and groundwater resources are available on high volcanic islands, small, low-lying coral and limestone atolls have limited groundwater and no surface water, hence are highly dependent on rainfall. Almost all islands utilize groundwater if not for potable purposes, then for washing needs. The development of water resources for human uses has focused largely on urban centres, whilst smaller and remote communities in PICTs often lack basic water services. Available water resources are also subject to multiple threats, mainly from untreated human and mine wastes, agricultural chemicals, and sediments from forestry operations. Freshwater lenses in PICTs are facing saline intrusion resulting from over-exploitation, sea-level rise, and storm surges. Climate change is altering long-term rainfall and evapotranspiration patterns and exacerbating extreme events such as cyclones, floods, and droughts. The small populations, limited financial resources, and low capacity across the water sector in PICTs, continue to inhibit progress with SDG 6, despite considerable donor support.

Freshwater in Oceania is highly variable, with the Pacific islands having generally limited access to freshwater which is under increasing threats from climate change and a variety of socio-economic drivers including overextraction and pollution.

1 Introduction

The Pacific, and the larger Oceania region, includes countries and territories that are highly diverse not only in terms of natural freshwater resources availability and access but also in terms of the capacity to manage available water resources. Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs) have generally limited freshwater resources. They are highly diverse in terms of culture and hydrogeography yet share a set of common challenges: small land area, limited groundwater and aquifer capacities, and high dependence on rainfall (Allen 2020; Falkland and White 2020). PICTs also have limited institutional and technical capacity to ensure access to water for everyone. Unlike the PICTs, Australia and New Zealand, the two developed nations of Oceania, have larger amounts of freshwater resources per capita, and also have advanced water management systems.

For a large oceanic region with numerous small islands and advanced economies like Australia and New Zealand, generalizing the state of freshwater resources is challenging, especially when comparable and recent data are limited for PICTs. Focusing on PICTs, this chapter aims to provide an overview of water resources, covering four key aspects: freshwater sources (supply), types and trends in demand on these resources (demand), existing and emerging threats to freshwater resources and water security (threats), and the effectiveness of efforts to achieve water security (responses). We draw on publicly available literature, key informant interviews, and global and regional databases.

2 Naturally Occurring Freshwater Sources

The three main forms of naturally occurring freshwater in Oceania are rainwater, surface water and groundwater. The distribution of freshwater is highly uneven among Australia, New Zealand, and PICTs (see Table 2.9 in Appendix 1). Although Australia is the driest inhabited continent on the planet, it is using less than 6% of renewable water resources each year (Prosser 2011; Jackson et al. 2017). New Zealand has abundant water resources with only 3% of its freshwater being used (World Bank 2021). Unlike these two advanced economies, PICTs have limited freshwater resources in general, with Fongafale islet in Tuvalu and Nauru, for example, having no confirmed accessible freshwater resources (Duncan 2011). Papua New Guinea (PNG) is an exception with 120,000 m³ of water per person. Geographic features such as island area, shape, topography, soils, and lithology greatly influence both the occurrence and distribution of natural freshwater sources (Falkland and White 2020). Geologically, the PICTs are a combination of five main forms, namely high volcanic, uplifted limestone, low-lying coral island and atolls and mixed combinations of these forms (Duncan 2011) (see Fig. 2.1). The larger, mountainous volcanic islands have substantial surface water and groundwater resources, while the small, low-lying coral, sand and limestone islands have very limited surface and groundwater (Falkland and White 2020).

Fig. 2.1

(Source Dixon-Jain et al. 2014). Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia) 2021. This product is released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence. Disclaimer: The boundaries and names shown and the designations used on this map do not imply official endorsement or acceptance by the United Nations

Hydrological island types

2.1 Surface Water

For PICTs, Falkland (2015) recognizes four forms of surface water: (a) surface and subterranean streams, (b) springs, (c) lakes and swamps (or wetlands), and (d) dams on some of the larger islands. Perennial streams only occur on the larger, higher rainfall islands such as in PNG, Fiji, and Solomon Islands. Ephemeral streams occur more typically in small, steeper catchments where flows occur for days or hours following rainfall. While data does not exist for most countries in the region, available data shows that PNG, Australia, and New Zealand have significantly higher amounts of freshwater (Table 2.1).

Table 2.1 Surface water availability for some countries (UN Water 2021)

Springs are an important water source on volcanic islands where bedrock has low permeability; here communities rely heavily on springs, although flow declines during droughts.¹ Wetlands are important sources of surface water for Pacific islands. There are four types according to Ellison (2009): riverine, lacustrine, freshwater swamp forests, and marshes. Freshwater lakes are found on some larger volcanic islands in the craters of extinct volcanoes, such as on Upolu, Samoa, or depressions in the topography (Falkland and White 2020). The small volcanic island of Niuafo’ou in northern Tonga has fresh and brackish lakes within its crater (Ellison 2009). The small atoll island Teraina (Washington Island), Kiribati has a central freshwater lagoon.

On some islands, dams have been constructed to store surface runoff for water supply, such as Vaturu Dam on the Nadi River, Viti Levu, Fiji, and the Fena Valley Dam, and Guam; and for hydroelectricity generation in French Polynesia, Fiji, New Caledonia, Samoa, and PNG (Falkland and White 2020). A dam is currently under construction in Solomon Islands for hydroelectricity (TRHDP 2021) (see Table 2.2 for dam capacity to harness water for all purposes in selected countries where data is available).

Table 2.2 Dam capacity per capita for selected countries in Oceania (UN Water 2021)

Australia’s water supply is secure in all but the most extreme droughts (ADB 2020a). It has high water storage per capita (approximately 21,481 cubic metres recorded in the period 2008–2012, FAO 2021) which is supplemented by six large desalination plants for its major coastal cities (total capacity 527 million cubic metres per annum). New Zealand’s water supply is also highly secure (ADB 2020a) with storage per capita of 69,544 cubic metres (recorded in the year 2017, FAO 2021), excepting during unprecedented droughts in recent years, associated with climate change.

2.2 Groundwater

Groundwater constitutes the majority of naturally occurring freshwater on small Pacific islands (Holding et al. 2016), with some islands using it as the only reliable freshwater (Dixon-Jain et al. 2014). Groundwater occurs on many small coral and limestone islands as ‘fresh groundwater lenses’ (Alberti et al. 2017). The groundwater lenses vary depending on rainfall, evapotranspiration, groundwater abstraction, and mixing with surrounding saline groundwater, with a coral island usually having 5–10 m thick groundwater lens (White and Falkland 2010). Leeward islands sustain larger lenses with slower discharge of groundwater and reduced mixing. In some islands, such as Nauru, fresh groundwater is found only on parts of the island due to the highly permeable karst limestone which promotes mixing of fresh and underlying saline water (White and Falkland 2010). The amount of groundwater for some countries with available data is given in Table 2.3.

Table 2.3 Groundwater resources for selected countries with available data (UN Water 2021)

Small island aquifers, unexpectedly, can host freshwater lenses next to the coastline (Alberti et al. 2017). Many of these lenses shrink during low rainfall periods with reductions in the available resources of 50–100% (Falkland 1993; Duncan 2011). Seawater located beneath the freshwater lens limits the amount of groundwater that can be extracted due to potential for salinization (McKenzie 2017). Salinization is escalated by poorly managed abstraction of groundwater, as found in Kiribati (Lal and Datta 2019). Saline water from storm surge overtopping can infiltrate from the surface to mix with the underlying freshwater lens, resulting in brackish water. Observations confirm the potential of rainfall to replenish the freshwater lens, typically floating on saline groundwater, with a brackish transition zone.² Australia, New Zealand, and PNG have more abundant groundwater than PICTs. In Australia, groundwater makes up approximately 17% of accessible water resources and accounts for over 30% of its total water consumption (Geoscience Australia 2020). New Zealand’s groundwater usage accounts for 30% of total water usage (GNS Science 2021).

2.3 Rainwater

Rainwater harvesting has been a valuable supplement to water supply in small island nations (SOPAC 2004). Rainwater is the cheapest freshwater supply source and generally has the highest quality in PICTs.³ Rainwater is also the main source of subsistence irrigation (Gale and deBrun 2017). A variety of factors, from climate change and El Niño and La Niña oscillations to shifts in rainfall belts due to volcanic eruptions, affect rainfall distribution in the Pacific (Higgins et al. 2020) (see Table 2.4 for long term trends of precipitation for some countries). Storage is important to access rainwater, and even high rainfall small islands such as Marshall Islands which receive 2000–4000 mm per year can undergo water stress due to lack of natural storage (SOPAC 2007c).

Table 2.4 Long term average precipitation in selected PICTs (UN Water 2021)

In PICTs, rainwater roof harvesting and tank storage is the primary source of household and community freshwater, as found prominently on islands such as Tokelau, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, and some islands in Tonga (Quigley et al. 2016; Falkland and White 2020). On the island of Fongafale, Funafuti atoll, Tuvalu, water supply is a combination of rainwater harvesting and water produced by the island’s desalination plant.⁴ On the Marshall Islands rainfall is collected from public buildings such as the Majuro High School, Majuro Hospital, and Ebeye Hospital⁵ and, on Majuro atoll, from a concrete runway and pumped to large above-ground storages (Falkland and White 2020). However, in Ebeye, rainwater harvesting issues such as suitability of roofing materials, gutters, downpipes, maintenance of tanks, and contamination were ignored.⁶ In the Cook Islands, large open buildings have been constructed solely to harvest rainwater and store it in 45,000 L concrete storage tanks (Falkland and White 2020). On some outer islands of PNG, plastic barrels placed under the crown of coconut trees collect rainwater for local use (Scott et al. 2003). Despite community-based rainwater harvesting systems working reasonably well in several island states (Bailey et al. 2018), concerns for water quality remain, as monitoring of pathogens and installation of remedial technologies are often overlooked (Kirs et al. 2017). UNESCO’s concept of UNESCO Green Academies might play an important role for rainwater collection, storage, and utilization (Henning et al. 2010; UNESCO, UN Habitat and SEAMEO 2021).

In New Zealand, 10% of the population, mostly in rural areas, depend on rainwater as a source of drinking water (New Zealand Ministry of Health 2019). Australia commenced non-potable rainwater harvesting during the Millennium Drought and it is now the third largest source of water after surface water (dams) and groundwater, constituting 9% of residential water (Rainwater Harvesting Australia 2021).

2.4 Derived Freshwater Sources

The three main derived freshwater sources supplementing natural sources are desalination of sea water, wastewater reuse, and imported bottled water. These are currently small relative to the naturally occurring sources, and wastewater reuse has not yet become a common source for potable water in PICTs.⁷ Desalination has been the primary source of potable water in Nauru for more than 20 years (SOPAC 2007a). In 2014, Vanuatu established a solar powered desalination plant on Ambae Island and a diesel-powered plant on Aniwa Island to provide freshwater to 11,000 people (PIF 2015). In 2018, a reverse osmosis desalination system was installed to provide clean water for the 800 people that live in Uripiv, Vanuatu. Funafuti has approximately 130,000 L/day supply from two desalination plants. The Republic of Marshall Islands has small suitcase styled desalination units which they deploy during times of emergency to outer islands, as part of their drought response.⁸ Reverse osmosis (RO) units are also used for producing bottled water in Tongatapu, Tonga, and on a small number of tourist islands such as in Cook Islands and Fiji (Falkland and White 2020). These technologically sophisticated desalination systems are appropriate only where and when replacement parts can be obtained reasonably quickly, and trained personnel are available; neither circumstance is common across the Pacific (Allen 2020) except when outsourced to the private sector such as in Ebeye⁹ and Nauru.

Imported bottled water has become an increasingly common source of derived water for drinking in some PICTs, especially as an emergency measure during droughts. In the 2011 drought, New Zealand shipped bottled water to Tuvalu, and Tokelau imported bottled water from Samoa. As bottled water is more expensive than conventional supply in PICTs (Duncan 2011), it is less likely to be a major source. Piping water between islands is another mechanism for water supply as in the case of Samoa, where freshwater is supplied by submarine pipeline over a distance of 4 km from the western end of Upolu to Manono Island (Falkland and White 2020). Bottled water, however, is also likely to cause another problem: plastic pollution.

Treating wastewater of all types and recycling for non-potable and potable water uses may emerge as a significant opportunity for PICTs in the future, should financial and technical capacity gaps be overcome. Treated wastewater is used for irrigation of garden and recreational areas at some tourist resorts and hotels in Fiji (Falkland and White 2020). Seawater and brackish groundwater are used for specific purposes on small islands where and when freshwater is scarce (Alberti et al. 2017). Some atoll islands use brackish groundwater for drinking and cooking during periods of severe drought. Seawater is used for toilet flushing and as a potential source for firefighting in densely populated parts of Tarawa and Majuro atolls and all of Ebeye island, Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands (Falkland and White 2020). In severe water scarcity times, seawater is even used for cooking.

Australia follows the global trend of increasing use of desalination as a source of drinking water (Lattemann et al. 2010; Turner et al. 2016), both as primary and supplemental sources during droughts (as discussed in detail in Chap. 8. New Zealand’s reliance on desalinated water is low, although it has been considered as a promising option for drought-hit Auckland). Recycling wastewater is an increasing trend in Australia since 1990 (Radcliffe and Page 2020) and New Zealand in urban areas, especially for irrigation and toilet flushing.

3 Demand and Supply Status

Water demand in Oceania is gradually increasing due to ongoing urbanization, population growth, and expanding economic activity (see Table 2.10 in Appendix 1). While advanced economies are able to meet most of the water demand, in the case of PICTs, about 6.9 million people cannot access improved sanitation and more than 4.8 million cannot access improved water supplies (WHO 2016). Improvements have been slow, with improved sanitation increasing from 29% in 1990 to 31% in 2015, and improved water sources from 46% in 1990 to 52% in 2015 (WHO 2016).

Most PICTs are urbanizing rapidly (Keen and Barbara 2016), with growing informal settlements (ADB 2016; Sanderson and Bruce 2020). Urban centres are generally supplied by public water utilities which are slowly improving their capacity to supply clean water and safely treat wastewater. Private water service providers are infrequent but are emerging as a key player as in the case of Port Vila, Vanuatu (SOPAC 2007b; UTS 2011).

All too often urban water supply can be unreliable, of limited availability, suffer leaks and illegal connections, be contaminated, and not generate adequate revenue for asset maintenance (Duncan 2011; Allen 2020). This issue is particularly challenging as informal communities in urban and peri-urban areas are the fastest growing communities in PICTs, with population growth rates of up to 26% per year, for example in some Honiara informal settlements (World Bank et al. 2015). A unique form of village cities has physically developed around a patchwork of native and traditional villages on customary land, creating a mosaic of towns and native and traditional villages (ADB 2016). The rapid rate of urbanization and growth of informal communities pose a profound challenge to providing services and building overall community resilience (Sanderson and Bruce 2020). Populations settling on and around water reserves are a major threat to water quality and quantity due to the lack of regulation for protecting water sources either from pollution or over-abstraction. Increasing urbanization is occurring on islands already water stressed such as Fongafale (Tuvalu), Tarawa (Kiribati) and Majuro and Ebeye (Marshall Islands). Port Moresby, PNG, with a population nearing one million, has a water supply designed to supply about 250,000 people. Honiara, Solomon Islands, is another example of urbanization stressing water supply, growing at more than twice the national population growth rate (preliminary 2019 census data indicates that the average annual growth rate in Honiara between 2009 and 2019 was about 5.6%).

Water quality is a major challenge in urbanizing areas of PICTs. Typically, about 10% of all deaths of children less than five years old in the Pacific islands are attributable to diarrheal diseases. About 90% of these diseases can be attributed to the lack of sanitation treatment systems, high levels of unimproved drinking water, and poor hygiene (WHO and SOPAC 2008), although the overall health impacts may be significantly higher with an indirect influence of these risk factors on many other causes of death.

In rural and remote areas, accounting for 70% of the population, collecting and storing drinking water from rain or local surface sources is an ongoing individual, family, and/or community task and disproportionately the responsibility of women and girls. Here, buying bottled water for drinking and food preparation is not an option due to lack of funds and/or local availability of bottled water (Anthonj et al. 2020).

Rural water supply systems are often managed by village or island councils or community ‘water committees.’ In some cases, such as village water supply schemes in Tonga, a small fee is charged to households to cover operational expenses (Falkland and White 2020). Across the Pacific, water utilities often have no commercial incentive to extend services to informal or remote settlements.

Australia’s water consumption is dominated by the agricultural sector which uses 50% (Jackson et al. 2017). The regional distribution of use is highly uneven across Australia. Despite being a water-rich country, New Zealand’s largest cities face water scarcity because of an increasingly variable climate, aging infrastructure, and growing populations (Talbot-Jones et al. 2020).

4 Threats to Water Security

Freshwater in the Pacific is becoming increasingly limited because of increasing demand (e.g., population growth and tourism) and decreasing supply (e.g., pollution and precipitation patterns) (UNESCO and UN Water 2020). Drinking water and sanitation coverage in most PICTs falls short of global averages (Hadwen et al. 2015). Sea level rise and extreme events related to climate change have significant additional impacts on water security (UNGA 2014). Exacerbated by weak governance, Pacific countries are amongst the most vulnerable in the world to disasters, which are becoming more intense and more frequent (Kumar et al. 2020).¹⁰ Climate change impacts and threats are covered in more detail in Chaps. 5 and 11.

4.1 Climate Extremes and Related Disasters

Climate change is a major challenge to the Pacific islands (Nurse et al. 2014; Barnett and Waters 2016; Kumar et al. 2020; McNamara et al. 2020), widely recognised as an impact multiplier for many of the challenges that the water sector already faces (Burns 2002; Holding et al. 2016; Chand et al. 2017; Day et al. 2019; Oppenheimer et al. 2019). Various projections of climate impacts differ significantly between and within PICTs (see Table 2.5), yet increasing water security risks is common in these assessments. IPCC 2014 concluded that current and future climate-related drivers of risk for small islands during the twenty-first century include sea level rise (SLR), tropical and extratropical cyclones, increasing air and sea surface temperatures, and changing rainfall patterns (Nurse et al. 2014). The Pacific Climate Change Science Programme (PCCSP) additionally anticipates that the Pacific will experience an increase in extremely hot days, extreme rainfall events, and ocean acidification. Sea-level rise is expected to be 0.18–0.59 m by 2080–2099 relative to 1980–1999. Droughts are projected to occur less often, but with increased severity. Annual average rainfall is expected to increase. Tropical storms and cyclones are expected to decrease in frequency but increase in intensity. The intensifying risk of cyclones, coupled with sea-level rise, will bring more disruptions in water supply systems and increased salinization of groundwater lenses, through storm surge overtopping.

Table 2.5 Summary of climate change projections for the Pacific (after Falkland and White 2020, based on Australian Bureau of Meteorology [BOM] and Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Association [CSIRO] 2014)

Rainfall across the southern Pacific islands is strongly influenced by the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon (see Chap. 5), whose characteristics will also be altered by climate change. The La Niña drought of 2011 severely impacted parts of Samoa, Tokelau and Tuvalu placing Tokelau and Tuvalu under states of emergency and requiring bottled water supply from donors (Kuleshov et al. 2014). Cyclones and heavy rainfall events can damage water supply infrastructure or contaminate drinking water supplies on volcanic islands or continental coastal areas. Sea-level rise is expected to inundate 4500 km of PNG’s total shoreline affecting 30% of the country’s population by 2050 (World Bank 2011).

The dependence of food production upon rain-fed agriculture across all PICTs means that their economies and livelihoods are particularly vulnerable to drought and rainfall variability caused by both cyclical influences of ENSO and anthropogenically-forced changes to the climate system. Increased variability in rainfall patterns, particularly more intense drought periods, significantly increases the freshwater vulnerability of islands such as Tuvalu and Kiribati. In rural PNG, the droughts of 1997–1998 and 2015–2016 affected over a million people, impacting water, and food security and many other sectors (PNG National Disaster Centre 2016).

Oceania has the highest regional disaster risk profile (Day et al. 2019) due to its exposure to extreme natural events¹¹ and because it is strongly affected by sea-level rise. Countries at particularly high risk are Vanuatu, Tonga, Solomon Islands, PNG, and Fiji. Critically, some of the Pacific countries at greatest risk to natural disasters are those that are the least developed to manage these risks (UNCTAD 2005).

The intense cyclonic rainfall and runoff experienced in several large volcanic islands has caused flooding on the coastal plains. In Vanuatu, Cyclone Pam damaged or contaminated water supplies leaving nearly half of the population (110,000) without drinking water (Handmer and Iveson 2017). Again, in Vanuatu, Cyclone Harold hit amidst COVID-19 lockdown, restricting movement of people and supplies needed to assist the cyclone-affected communities.

4.2 Pollution, Water Quality, and Development

Mortality rate attributed to unsafe water, sanitation, and hygiene services appear to be associated with Human Development Index (HDI) rank. Australia (HDI rank 8) and New Zealand (HDI rank 14) have a mortality rate of children under 5 years of age of 3.1 and 4.7 per 1000 births respectively, Fiji (HDI rank 93) has 21.6, Samoa (HDI rank 111) has 13.6, Tonga (HDI rank 104) has 13.4 (UNDP 2020). In PICTs, surface water and rainwater are subject to microbial (viral, bacterial, fungal, protozoan, etc.) contamination often in contact with organic debris. Besides salt, such microorganisms are the major contaminants of freshwater in Pacific islands, while metal, mineral, pesticide, or other chemical contamination are generally much less of an issue (Allen 2020). Many such pathogens can induce illness. Countries in Oceania vary widely in terms of sanitation services, as exemplified by the rate of open defecation (Table 2.6) and percentage of sewerage treated (Table 2.7).

Table 2.6 Percentage of people adopting open defecation (UN Water 2021)

Table 2.7 Proportion of treated sewage for some countries with available data (UN Water 2021)

Agricultural chemical use, such as fertilizers and pesticides, increased significantly from the mid-1990s in the Pacific region and continues to be a threat to water supplies and ecosystem health (Diarra and Surendra 2020). Sediment loads arising from agricultural and forestry activities also compromise water treatment capacity in water supplies (Duncan 2011).

The highly porous nature of the sandy, calcareous, and volcanic soils commonly found on PICTs makes many groundwater resources (especially shallow aquifers) and surface waters vulnerable to pollution from sanitation systems (Duncan 2011; Dixon-Jain et al. 2014). Aquifers have been polluted through septic tank seepage, as was reported in Majuro (Marshall Islands) and Tarawa (Kiribati) where water was compromised by septic tank seepage from densely populated urban areas overlying shallow aquifers (Falkland 2002). Septic tank seepage is also a significant source of contamination of Port Vila Harbour, Vanuatu, leading to the banning of swimming. Eutrophication of waters from leaking sanitation systems and agricultural chemicals has been identified as the major threat to Pacific aquatic ecosystems (Duncan 2011).

While the proportion of the population using improved sanitation facility is 99.4% for Australia and New Zealand, it is only for 34.2% for other countries in Oceania (UN Water 2021).

The hydropower potential of Pacific islands is being increasingly recognised (Hourçourigaray et al. 2014) but is also a threat to freshwater systems by altering natural flow regimes. Hydropower systems do offer a potential co-benefit to water supply systems which require a consistent daily flow that is supported by storage to cover dry periods. Consideration of this dual benefit to water security requires a more holistic consideration of hydropower schemes.

Mining is a significant source of income in Papua New Guinea and Nauru; however, impacts of mine waste are potentially catastrophic (Duncan 2011). For example, the Ok Tedi Mine located in the central PNG highlands has severely impacted the Fly River by discharging tonnes of waste and tailings into the river for decades (Carr 2007). This shows that local mining impacts can be extreme and affect a much wider environment. In Fiji, mineral extraction has been raised as a concern regarding its impact on rivers and waterways, identifying the need for more effective regulations (UNDP and SPC 2018).

Deforestation in catchments of volcanically young, high islands has led to massive soil erosion and impacts upon wetlands (SPREP 2011). Soil erosion and sediment loads are a significant threat to freshwater ecosystems and near-shore reefs and potentially compromise water treatment capacity in water supplies. In Honiara, Solomon Islands, water quality of the Kongulai Spring, which is the source of about 40% of the city’s water, is compromised by logging (deforestation) and in 2019 resulted in 59 shutdowns of the water source as turbidity exceeded public health standards (20 NTU). To address this issue, Solomon Water is investing in a new water treatment plant.

Contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) are ubiquitous globally (OECD 2017, 2020) but research on these contaminants is limited across the Pacific. These include pharmaceuticals, hormones, antibiotics, micro/nanoplastics, industrial and household chemicals, personal care products, pesticides, and flame retardants.

5 Current Efforts and Future Priorities to Achieve Water Security

PICTs face intensifying challenges to achieve adequate access to sanitation and safe drinking water, protect sensitive ecosystems, and generate productive use of variable water resources (Duncan 2011; Gheuens et al. 2019). These challenges require innovative approaches and tailoring of solutions to the complex combination of geographical and socio-economic constraints of individual islands. Despite being a global hotspot of water insecurity, ADB (2020a, b) shows some positive trends in water security from 2013 to 2020 (Table 2.8).

Table 2.8 State of national water security in some PICTs as defined by ADB (2020a)

Some innovative solutions are offering new ways for Pacific communities to enhance their water security and resilience (Poustie et al. 2016) and self-sufficiency. Water sensitive cities’ principles are being trialled as part of the RISE (Revitalising Informal Settlements and their Environments) program in Fiji whereby local solutions are being integrated with broader water resource management to improve public health (CRC-WSC 2020). New water filtering technologies are increasing effectiveness and decreasing costs of local treatment (Allen 2020).

In a significant regional policy commitment made in 2014 and known as Samoa Pathway (United Nations 2014), Pacific states committed collectively to:

• develop institutional and human capacities for the effective, inclusive, and sustainable implementation of the integrated management of water resources;

• provide and operate appropriate facilities and infrastructure for safe drinking water, sanitation, hygiene, and waste management systems;

• facilitate the expansion of wastewater treatment, recycling, and reuse;

• improve water-use efficiency and work towards eliminating over-extraction, especially of groundwater, and to mitigate the effects of saltwater intrusion.

Despite such clearly articulated policy visions, PICTs face several challenges to achieve SDG 6.

First, the water supply and sanitation challenge is particularly difficult for rural and remote communities that account for 70% of the region’s population. Informal urban settlements often have poor sanitation facilities, and water quality alongside high population densities. Water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services remain inadequate in hospitals of the Pacific (Mannava et al. 2019). According to UNICEF (2020), PNG lies at the bottom of all Pacific countries in water and sanitation ranking, with over 6,000 diarrheal deaths per year.

Second, the problems of water management and policy are rooted in some of the unique socio-cultural dynamics of the region: (1) coexisting formal and informal governance types, (2) customary land tenure and attitudes toward land and water ownership, (3) tensions between urbanizing societies and the traditional values of subsistence communities, (4) a lack of trust in the capacity of institutions to provide core services, and (5) traditional gender roles related to water collection. Most PICTs lack gender disaggregated data and policy response (Michalena et al. 2020). Water governance is often centralized, focused within a few government agencies, with limited coordination between agencies, communities, and the private sector. National water and sanitation regulations are limited in scope or absent, and institutional roles and responsibilities are unclear in many situations. Situations of ‘legal pluralism’ exist wherein indigenous rules come in conflict with the formal state legislations (Roche et al. 2019).

Third, PICTs have high dependency on overseas support, receiving official development assistance exceeding 30% of their GDP (Duncan 2011) (see Table 2.11 in Appendix 1). Private financing of water and sanitation services is limited due to poor cost recovery and a lack of ‘economies of scale.’ Coordination between donors and other international and local organizations is generally weak. A recent assessment of 32 community-based adaptation initiatives across 20 communities in the Pacific suggests a shift towards adaptation that is locally led, with donors and implementers becoming facilitators rather than providing highly prescriptive models (McNamara et al. 2020).

Fourth, the low capacity of the water sector in PICTs remains a critical challenge (Paeniu et al. 2016; Dahan 2018). Many countries have small administrations dealing with the varying complexities of main and outer island issues, without the economies of scale. In addition, most PICTs have very small numbers of trained water resources specialists, and their ability to undertake strategic planning and action is often limited. In a 2007 assessment of IWRM in the Pacific, all the countries identified a lack of water resources expertise and baseline knowledge as being a barrier to informed decision-making related to water management (SOPAC and UNDP 2007). A 2018 report again identified expertise and institutional capacity as the major limiting factors in the water sector in PICTs (Dahan 2018). Hence fit-for-purpose training, as well as increased formal water and environmental education will be an essential component of improving water security in the long term.

Fifth, integration across development, climate change adaptation, and disaster risk management remains weak. For example, in Tarawa, Kiribati, the threat of sea-level rise and drought exacerbates the existing development pressures of rapid urbanization, pollution, and poor sanitation. However, the population of South Tarawa has developed sophisticated strategies for coping with inadequate water supply.¹² Households follow several advanced water scarcity management principles, such as diversification of water resources, fit-for-purpose water use, thrifty water consumption, and adaptive strategies of water use, depending on the local level of water stress. Collectivism and water sharing also play a critical role in reducing affordability challenges, water-related conflicts, and vulnerability to drought.

Sixth, there is inadequate water data collection, infrastructure, data analysis, and reporting to generate action-oriented knowledge to inform decision making in most Pacific countries (Kohlitz et al. 2016; Catchlove et al. 2019). Communication across sectors and between communities and government is often disjointed. Information may also be unavailable due to a lack of data sharing and limited coordination between bodies responsible for water management (Dahan 2018). Data on river health and threats of many islands is incomplete (Bunn et al. 2019). Researchers have also highlighted the need for strengthening local to regional scale information management and knowledge brokering (Morioka et al. 2019).

6 Conclusion

Countries and territories in Oceania vary greatly in terms of freshwater availability and water security. Of the largest nations, Australia and New Zealand are at an advanced stage of water security; Papua New Guinea, the third largest nation, struggles to ensure water security despite being endowed with plenty of surface and groundwater. The freshwater resources of PICTs are generally limited and highly variable both spatially and temporally. PICTs also face the additional challenges of remoteness, small size, fragility, natural vulnerability, and limited human and financial resources, which continue to inhibit progress with SDG 6, despite having considerable donor support. Climate change is altering long-term rainfall patterns and exacerbating extreme events such as floods, droughts, and cyclones.

Whilst surface and groundwater resources are available on high volcanic islands, they are limited on small, low-lying coral and limestone atolls, giving rise to a greater dependence on rainfall. Available water resources are also subject to multiple threats—untreated human effluent, mine wastes, agricultural chemicals, and sediments from forestry operations. Freshwater lenses are facing saline intrusion from over-exploitation, sea-level rise, and storm surges. The development of water resources for human uses has focused on established urban centres, whilst informal, smaller, and remote communities frequently lack basic water services. Rainwater harvesting, desalination, and bottled water have helped poorer communities in rural areas to meet household water demands.

The future water security of Pacific islands will be determined by the effectiveness of climate change adaptation and disaster risk management, integrated with development efforts. Investment in infrastructure, institutional capacity, and knowledge systems, co-designed in island specific contexts, will be essential. Improved implementation of enabling national policies and legislation, will help mitigate freshwater vulnerability. Sustained capacity development and retention, focusing particularly on gender equality and social inclusion, will have a positive impact across all water related sectors. Enhanced data collection, analysis, and conversion to actionable knowledge will underpin water security.

If access to improved water and sanitation is to be effectively promoted in Pacific island countries, governments must continue to refine policy to ensure good governance and service delivery. A mixture of integrated water resources management, nature-based solutions, and appropriate infrastructure is required to advance SDG 6 across the Pacific region. There is also an opportunity to deepen partnerships and cooperation between advanced water management countries such as Australia and New Zealand and the PICTs.

Appendix 1: State of Water Resources by Country

See Tables 2.9, 2.10, 2.11.

Table 2.9 Overview of freshwater availability in the Pacific where data is available

Table 2.10 Water demand in countries with available data (FAO 2021)

Table 2.11 Amount of water and sanitation related official development assistance (million 2019 USD) received by PICTs (UN Water 2021)