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Immense concern for the sustainability and wastage of fish maw byproducts were expressed by interviewees. They reported that fish are becoming harder to catch and that sizes of fish caught are declining.

Understanding perceived equity is key, equity subjective, context-dependent and has implications for legitimacy, cooperation and wellbeing. Since gender in combination with other social characteristics, influence how people benefit or participate in management, examining perceived fairness from an intersectional perspective is crucial.

Restoring island resilience: managing invasive species for a resilient Pacific Wednesday, December 7, 16:00 - 17:00 ET Addressing invasive species can increase the climate resilience of Pacific Island ecosystems and communities. The GEF supported the development of the Pacific Regional Invasive Species Management Support Service as a regional mechanism to scale up support and help countries to mainstream invasive species management. This event will discuss the wide-ranging impacts of invasive species management for biodiversity, SDGs, and beyond. Atelaite Lupe Matoto - Director of Environment, Tonga Stuart Chape - Director, Island and Ocean Ecosystems, Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme Richard Griffiths - Island Conservation Sarah Wyatt - Biodiversity Specialist, SIDS regional team, GEF

This project - Disaster Risk Reductino and Climate Change Impact Survey if Cultural Sites in the Republic of Palau: Reconnaissance Survey is the first phase of a longer-term initiative to examine archaeologically and culturally significant sites across the archipelago and assess their vulnerability to climate change, including but not limited to modelled projections of rising sea levels and sedimentation and erosion of sites vis-a-vis tidal inundation and rainfall.

In 2018, the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) adopted a decision on protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs). It contains the definition of an OECM and related scientific and technical advice that has broadened the scope of governance authorities and areas that can be engaged and recognised in global conservation efforts. The voluntary guidance on OECMs and protected areas, also included in the decision, promotes the use of diverse, effective and equitable governance models, the integration of protected areas and OECMs into wider landscapes and seascapes, and mainstreaming of biodiversity conservation across sectors.

Work on the poet-2020 global biodiversity framework is now well advanced and will outline a vision, goals and targets for the next decade of biodiversity conservation and beyond. For the effectiveness of Protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures, an indicator has been proposed for areas meeting their documented ecological objectives.

There is a growing recognition that conservation strategies should be designed accounting for cross-realm connections, such as freshwater connections to land and sea, to ensure effectiveness of marine spatial protection and minimize perverse outcomes of changing land-use. Yet, examples of integration across realms are relatively scarce, with most targeting priorities in a single realm, such as marine or freshwater, while minimizing threats originating in terrestrial ecosystems. To date, no study has optimized priorities across multiple realms to produce a spatially explicit integrated conservation plan that simultaneously accounts for multiple human activities at a national scale. This represents a major gap in the application of existing cross-realm planning theory. We present a national scale conservation framework for selecting protected areas using a case study of Papua New Guinea (PNG) that integrates multiple systems and ecological connectivity to account for cross-realm benefits and minimize threats of land-use and climate change. The relative importance of both the forests and inshore reef environments to PNG subsistence and commercial livelihoods emphasizes the importance of considering the connections between the land and sea. The plan was commissioned by the PNG Conservation and Environment Protection Authority and identifies a comprehensive set of priorities that meet conservation targets in both the land and sea. Our national-scale prioritization framework is useful for agencies and managers looking to implement actions given multiple objectives, including watershed management and biodiversity protection, and ensures actions are efficient and effective across the land and sea.

We report three major and confronting environmental issues that have received little attention and require urgent action. First, we review the evidence that future environmental conditions will be far more dangerous than currently believed. The scale of the threats to the biosphere and all its lifeform including humanity is in fact so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts. Second we ask what political or economic system, or leadership, is prepared ti handle the predicted disasters, or even capable of such actions. Third, this dire situation places as extraordinary responsibility on scientists to speak out candidly and accurately when engaging with government, business and the public.

This policy analysis identifies threats to coral reefs, evaluates the effectiveness of the existing legal framework to address these threats and formulates recommendations to strengthen community-based natural resource management in Solomon Islands coral reefs of crucial importance for food security and rural livelihoods in the archipelago. Logging is a major yet often overlooked threat to coral reefs in the country. Large-scale logging operations cause massive erosion, which has a detrimental effect on water quality. The shipping accidents oil pollution and uncontrolled construction of log pond associated with the logging industry also have a significant impact on coastal ecosystems.

Invasive alien species represent one of the most significant threats to Arctic ecosystems and their inhabitants. Rapidly changing environmental conditions and a growing interest in resource extraction, settlement and tourism make the Arctic region particularly vulnerable to biological invasion. For this reason, invasive alien species are of substantial concern to the Arctic Council, a multi-national body comprised of Canada, the Kingdom of Denmark (including Greenland and the Faroe Islands), Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States, as well as six international organisations that represent Arctic indigenous peoples as Permanent Participants. The Arctic Council’s Arctic Invasive Alien Species (ARIAS) Strategy and Action Plan includes the priority to: “actively facilitate the eradication of invasive alien species from island ecosystems throughout the Arctic, as well as the recovery of native island species and habitats that have been impacted by invasive alien species.” A multi-national team of governmental and non-government partners is collaborating in the development of an action plan (hereafter ‘islands plan’) for the eradication of invasive alien species from Arctic island ecosystems. The intent of the plan is to provide a vision and strategy for a region-wide approach to the eradication of island invasive alien species as a multi-national commitment. The islands plan will set forth a strategy for prioritising island eradications consistent with the growing pressures on ecological and cultural systems. We have a unique opportunity in the Arctic to take decisive action to prevent and mitigate the adverse impacts of invasive alien species that plague much of the rest of the world. The eradication of invasive alien species from islands in other parts of the world provides useful insights into best practices, including approaches to prioritisation and cost-effectiveness.