The “Sustainable Integrated Water Resources and Wastewater Management Project in Pacific Island Countries” or Pacific IWRM project for short, aims to assist 14 Pacific Island Countries (Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu) to improve by focussing on best practices and demonstrations of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) wastewater management and Water Use Efficiency (WUE) approaches and plans.

The project has been developed over a period of four years (2004-2008) by the 14 participating states in close collaboration with SOPAC, the United Nations Environment and Development Programmes (UNEP and UNDP), and with the support of funding from the Global Environment Facility (GEF).

During this development phase the countries have gone through a process of undertaking IWRM situation analyses (national diagnostic analyses), identifying key national priorities in regards to IWRM (hotspot analyses), and on the basis on this 13 countries have developed proposals for national demonstration projects to address some of these priorities by practically applying IWRM approaches and best practice.

The demonstration projects will apply an IWRM approach to address a wide range of issues to reduce environmental stress, improve community access to clean water, support innovative approaches to determine the best use of water resources, reduce water related health risks through protection of water supplies, and/or reduce sewage releases into the fresh and marine water environments.

These demonstration projects make up the first and most costly component of the project. The other components, which are mainly supported through the wider Pacific IWRM Programme and specifically the EU-funded Pacific IWRM National Planning Programme, will help to secure the long term benefits of the demonstration projects and lessons learned by:

Component 2: Setting up mechanisms and a regional indicator framework for monitoring progress towards IWRM and WUE

Component 3: Supporting policy, legislative and institutional reform

Component 4: Building regional and national capacity for knowledge exchange and replication of IWRM and WUE best practice on the regional and global SIDS level

Having recently been approved for funding of USD 10.7 million from the GEF the project is now ready for implementation during the coming five years (2008- 2013). The recruitment of a regional project management unit and national project teams are currently underway.



The project's progress can be viewed on the sister IWRM (GEF Pacific) website: www.pacific-iwrm.org