The objective of an Ecosystem and Socio-economic Resilience Analysis and Mapping (ESRAM) process is to generate a robust planning baseline to inform the identification of ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) options for strengthening the socio-ecological resilience of communities to the impacts of climate change and other direct anthropogenic impacts.
Bamboo Bay is an important turtle nesting site in Malekula especially for green and hawksbill turtles. The community has been monitoring and conserving turtles, their nests and hatchlings since the 1990s. A village elder, Noel Kaibaba, was the first turtle monitor in Bamboo Bay trained by the Wan Smolbag Theatre turtle programme. The WSB turtle programme has been instrumental in promoting and supporting community turtle monitoring activities through funding support from SPREP projects.
The common interest in healthy fish stocks means that solutions must involve support from conservationists, scientists and fishers. One such example is the deployment of Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs) in waters off northern Australia, where six species of sea turtle come into conflict with significant prawn and scallop trawl fisheries. According to WWF Australia, bycatch is the leading cause of death for cetaceans, turtles, dugongs, sharks and seabirds – and some populations are likely to become extinct due to repeated encounters with fishing gear.
The high seas – the vast waters beyond national jurisdiction – cover nearly two-thirds of our planet. They are home to some of Earth’s most mysterious and vital ecosystems, from migratory whales to deep sea corals, and serve as a crucial regulator of the global climate by absorbing carbon and heat. Yet despite their importance, they remain largely unprotected, vulnerable to overfishing, deep-sea mining, plastic pollution, and the mounting impacts of climate change.
the Sea on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction (also known as the ‘BBNJ Agreement’)1 was agreed. This new international legally binding instrument is aimed at conserving and sustainably using the marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction. Once in force,2 the effective and timely implementation of the BBNJ Agreement will make crucial contributions toward addressing the triple planetary crisis of nature and biodiversity loss, pollution and climate change.
Global efforts to restore mangrove coverage face a growing but underexplored threat from a warming ocean, jeopardizing the future benefits mangroves provide. Using high-resolution global data across 1-degree grid cells, we assess how climatic and socioeconomic factors influence mangrove dynamics. We find that mangroves are depleted in lower-income regions, but eventually restored as income rises. Similarly, mangroves in cooler areas may benefit from warming temperatures up to a threshold beyond which damage occurs.
Measurements analyzed by an international research team led by ETH Zurich show that the global ocean absorbed significantly less CO₂ than anticipated during the unprecedented marine heat wave in 2023. The world's oceans act as an important sink for carbon dioxide (CO₂). To date, they have absorbed around a quarter of human-induced CO₂ emissions from the atmosphere, thereby stabilizing the global climate system.
Fish and other marine organisms, though deeply affected by human activities, don’t respect human borders. The ranges of many commercially important species in fact straddle the borders of countries’ exclusive economic zones (EEZs) and international waters, known as the high seas. This arrangement, which makes fisheries management difficult, is set to get even more complicated as climate change continues to heat up the ocean, a new study says.
Coral reefs are in crisis. Rising ocean temperatures driven by climate change are pushing these ecosystems to the brink, with mass bleaching events becoming more frequent and severe. But what if nature already holds part of the solution?
The R4N Guidebook Series provides an in-depth analysis of models across the globe that unlock private sector capital into nature restoration or protection, including nature-based solutions (NbS). Each Guidebook offers detailed insights into the development of these models, the enabling conditions that allowed them to succeed, along with key lessons learned.
