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. 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. 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.