Country Water Resources and Climate Change

As one commentator has observed, “[O]ne ironic and tragic aspect of this environmen-tal crisis of greenhouse emissions is the fact that those parts of the world least respon-sible for creating the global warming problem will be the first to suffer its horrifying consequences ” (Panjabi 1993, Burns 2000). Pacific Island Developing Countries (PIDCs) are responsible for only 0.03 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, and the average island resident produces only one-quarter of the emissions of the average person worldwide (Hay 1999). Yet it is anticipated that these nations will expe-rience some of the earliest and most severe consequences of climate change over the next two centuries (IPCC 2001a, Burns 2001). While the popular press has focused on the threat of inundation of island coastal areas by rising sea levels, perhaps the most critical near- and long-term threat to these nations is the possible impacts of climate change on freshwater quality and availability (Meehl 1996, East-West Center 2001). This chapter focuses on the potential impacts of climate change on the already severely strained freshwater resources of PIDCs