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The state of Australia's birds in 2006 with the number of invasive alien species.

Agriculture and food production offer stable livelihood options to rural communities throughout Asia and the Pacific region. Even as the effects of globalization spread in the region, farm production – most often at the smallholder level – continues to be a family enterprise. A fair share of farmers in the region engages in subsistence farming and poverty is a common occurrence among them. Farm enterprises are mostly managed by family members and family labour is a critical asset and often the only reliable investment. As rural women and men toil to preserve their heritage and broaden their economic choices, their endeavours are made more difficult by a lack of resources and market fluctuations. Asian and Pacific farmers, both men and women, are guardians of biodiversity, household food security and providers of food to urban communities. In these small farm enterprises distinct gender roles and gender differentiated access to technology and resources are evident. This disparity is compounded by the neglect of investment in rural social infrastructures such as education, health care and communications. In such resource poor rural environments, the struggle by rural women for access to resources and services is inevitable. In many Asian and Pacific countries, substantial gender equality gains have been made in urban areas in education, health and employment. Yet rural women lag behind. Moreover, rural women’s work is multifaceted and demanding both as family workers and agricultural labourers. Social and economic indicators often do not do justice to their contributions. Development innovations such as microcredit and self-help groups promote rural women’s economic development, but emerging evidence suggests that gender equality in rural communities is far from an everyday reality. Persisting social biases and traditional perceptions and assumptions regarding women’s responsibilities and their capacities continue to hamper women’s progress. This publication presents an overview of both the substantial contribution made by rural women to the economies in the region and the persisting barriers to their advancement. The framework of analysis, data and information reviewed together illustrate the complexity of rural women’s work in the region and offer a broad perspective on women’s economic and social contribution as well as on the barriers they encounter in accessing resources.

Although the term biodiversity emerged from the pool of obscure jargon quite a few years ago, it is still enshrouded with significant ambiguity. At one extreme, some people use it as a loose synonym for nature. At the other extreme, some people reduce biodiversity to simplistic parameters, such as the number of species. Conservation organizations, both private and public, must navigate these waters with great care. They need to engage a pulic that loves nature as embodied in beautiful places and charming creatures - elk in a Yellowstone meadow or snow leopards on a Himalayan snowfield - while expounding the values of species and ecosystems that have "swamp," "rat," or "spider" in their titles. A the same time, to undertake their work in a systematic and rigorous manner, conservation organizations need to be able to quantify their goals and accomplishments. Some things are easy to measure, such as the areas of new reserves, but biodiversity writ large is not one of them.

The WHO Guide to sanitation in natural disasters (Assar, 1971) summarized the essential aspects of environmental health management in disasters. These included the provision of emergency water and sanitation services; the burial or cremation of the dead; vector and pest control; food hygiene; and the assessment of the danger of epidemics following emergencies and disasters, etc. Thirty years later these aspects remain essential, though the needs, challenges and opportunities are greater. The present book deals not only with emergency response, but also with measures designed to reduce the impact of disasters on environmental health infrastructure, such as water supply and sanitation facilities. It also aims to strengthen the ability of people to withstand the disruption of their accustomed infrastructure and systems for environmental health (e.g. shelter, water supply, sanitation, vector control etc.) and to recover rapidly.

The purpose of this booklet is to encourage the young people of the Federated States of Micronesia to pursue careers in environmental science and conservation, with the further goal of sustainable natural resource use and preservation of biodiversity in the Pacific. The text aims to make these topics relevant by focusing on the environments of Chuuk State and using Chuukese and outer island examples to illustrate scientific concepts. Cultural diversity goes hand in hand with biodiversity, so descriptions of the plant communities contain examples of how they are used by the people of Chuuk State. Proverbs, legends and stories, which show close, thorough observation of the environment and an interest in explaining it, are also included. This booklet is small indeed in comparison to the richness of the various environments of Chuuk State and the sophistication of local traditional knowledge about them. It is our hope that these environments will continue to be preserved, and that the knowledge of them will be set down by the local scientists and traditional experts of today and those who will follow.

The first of two workshops on Marine and Coastal Biodiversity in the Tropical Island Pacific Region was held at the East-West Center in Honolulu on 2 - 4 November 1994. The goal of the first workshop was to review the status of species systematics and database management studies and develop an action plan for marine and coastal biodiversity information management for the region. The workshop was divided into three parts...

Although a monograph, or series of papers, dealing comprehensively with the land arthropod fauna of any group of islands in the South Pacific may be expected to yield valuable results, in connection with distribution, modification due to isolation, and other problems, no such work is at present in existence.

The last two decades have seen an upsurge in research into the potential synergies between invasive species and climate change, with evidence emerging of increased invader success under climate change. All stages along the naturalization-invasion continuum are likely to be affected, from the introduction and establishment of alien species to their spread and transition to serious invaders. A key question is whether alien plants will have a relative advantage under climate change conditions. So far, evidence for differential responses of alien invasive and native species to climate change drivers (elevated CO2) and outcomes (increasing temperature, changing rainfall patterns, changes in disturbance regimes) is mixed. Although alien invasive plants appear to be more responsive to elevated CO2 than many native species, plant response to elevated CO2 and other climate change components is dependent on environmental conditions and resource availability. Similarly, correlative modelling of species-climate relationships has not revealed clear evidence that invasive plants are likely to be able to increase the extent of suitable habitat under future climates any more than their native counterparts. We suggest that the most important driver of a shift to alien-dominated vegetation under climate change will be the superior capacity of alien invasive plants to take advantage of colonisation opportunities arising from climate change, such as extreme climatic events, changes in disturbance regimes, and widespread reduction in vegetation resilience as range margin populations decline. There are substantial challenges ahead for managing invasive plants under future climates. Weed risk assessment and management approaches must incorporate consideration of future climatic conditions. Most importantly, we will need a shift in management approaches away from a focus on the control of undesirable alien plant species to building resilience of resident vegetation assemblages, in association with targeted monitoring and early eradication of alien plant species.