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Globally, protected areas associated with sacred sites and cemeteries are an emerging area of research. However, they are biased toward terrestrial systems. In Fiji, funerary protected areas (FPAs) in freshwater and marine systems are culturally protected by Indigenous Fijians following the burial of a loved one on clan land. First documented in the 1800s, FPAs in Fiji have not been researched despite more than 30 years of conservation efforts and countrywide co-management of natural resources.

The international community has made some headway on pledges to protect 30% of the Earth by 2030 but progress must accelerate, the official progress report from the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has found.

The Protected Planet Report 2024 reveals that 17.6% of land and inland waters and 8.4% of the ocean and coastal areas globally are within documented protected and conserved areas.

We describe below the data and provide an overview of the specific variables that are constructed for the analysis in the papers: “Revisiting Global Biodiversity: A Spatial Analysis of Species Occurrence Data from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility” by Susmita Dasgupta, Brian Blankespoor, and David Wheeler” (2024) and “Estimating Extinction Risks with Species Occurrence Data from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility” by Susmita Dasgupta, Brian Blankespoor, and David Wheeler (2024).

There has been a profound shift in attitudes towards the designation and management of site-based  conservation over the past 25 years, from being a predominantly science-based, top-down and  government-led approach to one that focuses on governance and equity, and is far more variable,  bottom-up and locally led.

Initiatives to protect 30% of Earth by 2030 prompt evaluation of how to efficiently target shortcomings in the global protected area (PA) network. Focusing on amphibians, the most vulnerable vertebrate class, we illustrate the conservation value of microreserves, a term we employ here to refer to reserves of <10 km2. We report that the network continues to under-represent threatened amphibians and that, despite this clear shortcoming in land-based conservation, the creation of PAs protecting amphibians slowed after 2010.

This paper presents the design and development of a coastal fisheries monitoring system that harnesses artificial intelligence technologies. Application of the system across the Pacific region promises to revolutionize coastal fisheries management. The program is built on a centralized, cloud-based monitoring system to automate data extraction and analysis processes. The system leverages YoloV4, OpenCV, and ResNet101 to extract information from images of fish and invertebrates collected as part of in-country monitoring programs overseen by national fisheries authorities.

The “Marine Protected Area Tool Hub” is an educational platform that is practitioner-focused at every level and developed to help you with your personalised challenges.

Carondelet is a remote seamount in the Phoenix Islands of the Republic of Kiribati. Earlier expeditions of the Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA) were not able to survey the seamount due to challenging ocean conditions. In 2015, scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and Kiribati Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resource Development conducted surveys around the shallow habitats (<30 m) of the seamount to characterize coral reef fish and benthic communities.

The management plan describes the priority strategies for the upland areas of the Lake Lanoto'o National Park that will nest maintain and improve the key conservation values in these areas by reducing the impact of threats including from climate change. 

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This report was commissioned by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) to raise awareness and understanding of the tools available to evaluate Protected Area Management Effectiveness (PAME); to provide case studies from the region on PAME assessment; and to help inform decision-making when choosing tools and planning assessments.