SPREP Country Report - Cook Islands

The fifteen Cook Islands are distinguished by being vastly separated from each other and varying greatly in terms of their population numbers and resource endowments. The necessity therefore arises in this Country Report to make a distinction, geographically, between environmental concerns on the larger, more densely and more technologically developed Rarotonga

the other southern Cook high islands with their mixed volcanic and limestone soils, balanced populations and reasonably harmonious development

and the sparsely settled little changed far-flung northern Cook atolls.