Management

Tropical countries are making ambitious commitments to Forest Landscape Restoration with the aim of locking up carbon, conserving biodiversity and benefiting local livelihoods. However, global and national analyses of restoration potential frequently ignore socio-legal complexities which impact both the effectiveness and equitability of restoration. We show that areas with the highest restoration potential are disproportionately found in countries with weak rule of law and frequently in those with substantial areas of unrecognised land tenure.

Community-based approaches to conservation and natural resource management are considered essential to meeting global conservation targets. Despite widespread adoption, there is little understanding about successful and unsuccessful community-based practices because of the challenges of designing robust evaluations to estimate impacts and analyse the underlying mechanisms to impact. Here we present findings from a national scale evaluation of the ‘locally managed marine areas’ network in Fiji, a marine community-based management initiative.

O Le Pupu-Pu'e National Park was the first Park established in Samoa at a time when the environment movement and concerns for our unique biodiversity and natural features was still only a passing thought. It has been forty-two years since the OLPPNP was established and the Park remains one of the as one of the few areas on Upolu island that has extensive protection from the ridge to reef.

Human rights matter for marine conservation because people and nature are inextricably linked. A thriving planet cannot be one that contains widespread human suffering or stifles human potential; and a thriving humanity cannot exist on a dying planet. While the field of marine conservation is increasingly considering human wellbeing, it retains a legacy in some places of protectionism, colonialism, and fortress conservation.

Community-based conservation can support livelihoods and biodiversity, while reinforcing local and Indigenous values, cultures, and institutions. Its delivery can help address cross-cutting global challenges, such as climate change, conservation, poverty, and food security. Therefore, understanding trends in community-based conservation is pertinent to setting and implementing global goals. We undertook a horizon scan to prioritize 15 emerging threats and opportunities expected to impact the future effectiveness of community-based conservation.

Never in the history of humanity has the world faced so many environmental threats. Climate change is now called a climate emergency. We are losing biodiversity at an alarming rate. Our oceans are being choked with plastic, and we continue to produce toxic chemicals that are harmful to humans and wildlife. For millions of people, access to fresh water and sanitation is a growing challenge...Now more than ever, the international community must step up and ensure that the global environment is properly protected.

The CKI OECM Workshop Report consolidates the discussions, outcomes, recommendations and next steps following the Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures Workshop, hosted by the National Environment Service, in partnership with Secretariat of Pacific Regional Environment Program and the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre, on the 24th - 25th January 2023 in Rarotonga, Cook Islands.  

Conserving our sea of islands: State of protected and conserved areas in Oceania is a landmark publication, bringing together regional and international experts to prepare the first comprehensive review of the status and issues for protected and conserved areas in the region. The report embodies the spirit of the late scholar Epeli Hau’ofa, who devised the phrase ‘Our Sea of Islands’ to help re-imagine the region as selfdetermined ‘Big Ocean States’ connected to place and each other – ideas that underpin conservation.

The growing need for effective tools and new approaches for natural resource management (NRM) is being met by PNG’s NRM Hub initiative, which is already helping to centralise environmental data and make it accessible to stakeholders everywhere. One tool in particular is finding great use  – the Managing Effectiveness Tracking Tool, or METT, a global framework customised by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to meet PNG’s unique environment and cultures. 

Achieving the target to conserve 30% of land and sea requires strong emphasis on equity. Equity in conservation is a matter of governance and includes recognition and respect for actors and their human and resource rights, equity in procedure (e.g., participation, accountability) and equitable cost/benefit distribution. Equity in conservation is crucial both for ethical reasons and for effective conservation and applies both to conservation actions on site, and to complementary actions designed to support conservation (e.g., stewardship incentives, support for local schools).