A Changing Climate

 Considering Multiple Futures: Scenario Planning to Address Uncertainty in Natural Resource Conservation

Despite considerable efforts these past four years, we are not on track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. We must dramatically step up the pace of implementation as we enter a decisive decade for people and the planet.

Corals and coral-associated species are highly vulnerable to the emerging effects of global climate change. The widespread degradation of coral reefs, which will be accelerated by climate change, jeopardizes the goods and services that tropical nations derive from reef ecosystems.

A guide to Community Vulnerability and Adaptation assessment and action

A Management and Adaptation Planning Guide for Natural Resource Managers. 2006. Pacific Islands Managed and Protected Area Community (PIMPAC) document.

Marshall, P. and Schuttenberg, H. 2006. A Reef Managers Guide to Coral Bleaching. Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, Townsville, Australia.

In this report the World Ocean Initiative assesses the challenges facing key sectors in the ocean economy, including seafood, shipping, tourism and renewable energy.

Rapid anthropogenic climate change is a major threat to ocean biodiversity, increasing the challenge for marine conservation.

For the Pacific Islands, community-based adaptation activities are crucial, and yet it remains uncertain whether they are effectively promoting long-term adaptive capacity. Here we evaluate the performance of 32 community-based adaptation initiatives across 20 rural communities in the Pacific.

A hopeful vision of the future is a world in which both people and nature thrive, but there is little evidence to support the feasibility of such a vision.

Atolls are small, geographically isolated, resource-poor islands scattered over vast expanses of ocean.

This volume brings together rich insights of how biological diversity matters to people and their physical, mental and spiritual health and well-being, particularly in the context of a changing climate.

Janishevski, L. and Gidda, S.B. 2010.  Carbon Emissions from Forest Loss in Protected Areas. Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (SCBD) and UNEP; Issue Paper No. 6.

Human pressure mapping is important for understanding humanity’s role in shaping Earth’s patterns and processes. We provide the latest maps of the terrestrial human footprint and provide an assessment of change in human pressure across Earth.

The ecology of many coral reefs has changed markedly over recent decades in response to various combinations of local and global stressors.

Cleaner Pacific 2025 - Implementation Plan

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are recognized as highly effective tools for marine conservation. They may also play an important role in mitigating climate change.

Perry, J and C. Falzon. 2014.  Climate Change Adaptation for Natural World Heritage Sites: a Practical Guide.  World Heritage Papers 37.

This guide is intended primarily to:

Climate Change and Ocean Circulation

Climate change will impact coral-reef fishes through effects on individual performance, trophic linkages, recruitment dynamics, population connectivity and other ecosystem processes.

Climate Change in the Pacific: Scientific Assessment and New Research

New Guinea is the most biologically and linguistically diverse tropical island on Earth, yet the potential impacts of climate change on its biocultural heritage remain unknown.

Scientists have advocated for local interventions, such as creating marine protected areas and implementing fishery restrictions, as ways to mitigate local stressors to limit the effects of climate change on reef-building corals.

Marine protected areas (MPAs) provide place-based management of marine ecosystems through various degrees and types of protective actions.

Climate Prediction for Small Island Nations: Managing risks, maximizing opportunities

Politicians, economists and even some natural scientists have tended to assume that tipping points1 in the Earth system — such as the loss of the Amazon rainforest or the West Antarctic ice sheet — are of low probability and little understood.

Climate, Carbon and Coral Reefs

People, local cultures and the environments they live in are complex and dynamic social-ecological systems that have evolved together over time and are continually affected by a myriad of factors, including climate and global changes.

Pacific Island biodiversity has a notorious record of decline and extinction which continues due to habitat loss and degradation, invasive species, overexploitation, pollution, disease and human-forced climate change.

Grimsditch, G.D., and Salm, R. V.  2006. Coral Reef Resilience and Resistance to Bleaching.  IUCN, Gland, Switzerland.

Increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere put shallow, warm-water coral reef ecosystems, and the people who depend upon them at risk from two key global environmental stresses: 1) elevated sea surface temperature (that can cause coral bleaching and related mortality), and 2) ocean aci

Over the last decades scientists have discovered that seagrass meadows, tidal marshes, and mangroves – “blue carbon” ecosystems – are among the most intensive carbon sinks in the biosphere.

Our rapidly warming climate is threatening coral reefs as thermal anomalies trigger mass coral bleaching events. Deep (or “mesophotic”) coral reefs are hypothesised to act as major ecological refuges from mass bleaching, but empirical assessments are limited.

Green, A., White, A., Kilarski, S.

The science is clear: the biodiversity crisis, the climate crisis and the health crisis are interdependent.

Explaining Ocean Warming

(460 pages!)

The vulnerability of marine biodiversity to accelerated rates of climatic change is poorly understood.

An expedition in 2002 to the Phoenix Islands Protected Area in the Republic of Kiribati documented an extensive and delicate community of staghorn and tabular Acropora colonies...

This Pacific Sustainable Development Report 2018 (PSDR) is the first quadrennial Pacific progress report on sustainable development. The report outlines high level trends on progress to date, as well as baseline information.

The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) works to identify and draw attention to emerging issues of environmental concern. The UNEP Frontiers’ report continues to advance this work, signaling environmental issues and solutions for effective and timely responses.

Global Climate Change Alliance

The magnitude and pace of global change demand rapid assessment of nature and its contributions to people. We present a fine-scale global modeling of current status and future scenarios for several contributions: water quality regulation, coastal risk reduction, and crop pollination.

Green Climate Fund

Coral reefs worldwide are suffering mass mortalities from marine heat waves. With the aim of enhancing coral bleaching tolerance, we evolved 10 clonal strains of a common coral microalgal endosymbiont at elevated temperatures (31°C) for 4 years in the laboratory.

There are plenty of ways we can all positively impact the environment. If we want to stop climate change, we all need to take steps to make our lives environmentally-friendly. The following practices are an easy introduction to green living.

The oceans are facing more threats now than at any time in history. Yet a nascent industry is ramping up to exert yet more pressure on marine life: deep sea mining.

Ocean warming is causing declines of coral reefs globally, raising critical questions about the potential for corals to adapt. In the central equatorial Pacific, reefs persisting through recurrent El Niño heatwaves hold important clues.

Information and Knowledge Management for Climate Change (IKM4CC) Guidelines: complete set

The impacts of climate change and the socioecological challenges they present are ubiquitous and increasingly severe.

Islands of the Future: Building resilience in a changing world