Since the early 1990s the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) has been promoting the use of environmental planning and assessment processes amongst its member countries and territories. SPREP's approach to environmental planning and assessment has been part of a global programme for improving environmental management and supporting sustainable development.
Disposal by incineration instead has some major disadvantages. The air pollution risks are usually not as high (as they are on continents), thanks to the large expanses of surrounding
ocean. Yet the high costs and challenging technological safety demands of incineration tend to make it an inappropriate disposal solution. Improvements in gasification systems and
energy recovery could alter this balance over the next few decades. However, the prospect of turning the mountains of plastic residues into an energy source are likely to remain a fantasy in the foreseeable future.
Niue is a single raised coral atoll in the South-central Pacific located at latitude 19 S and Longitude 169 W. It is isolated, being approximately 480 kilometre East of Tonga. 930 kilometre west of Rarotonga and 660 kilometre South-East of Samoa.
Biodiversity tends to be at a maximum in the
equatorial region in the west of the Pacific Islands
area, and decreases markedly towards the east. For
example, the number of naturally occurring species of
animals and plants is much greater in the Solomon
Islands than in Tahiti. This is also true of the marine
environment, where fish and invertebrate species,
including corals, are far more numerous in the west
of the sub-region than in the east.
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