The Pacific Islands are extremely vulnerable to the effects of a changing climate. However, incorporating climate change components into protected area planning is a relatively new field and for some practitioners, has not been considered in management planning or implementation. The resources in this section are intended to assist practitioners with monitoring, managing and adapting for climate change within a protected areas framework.
Increasing Coral Reef Resilience Through Successive Marine Heatwaves
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
Information and Knowledge Management for Climate Change (IKM4CC) Guidelines: complete set
Integrating climate adaptation and biodiversity conservation in the global ocean
The impacts of climate change and the socioecological challenges they present are ubiquitous and increasingly severe.
IUCN World Heritage Outlook 3
IUCN World Heritage Outlook 3 builds on three cycles of Conservation Outlook Assessments undertaken since 2014. It presents the main results for 2020, but also some longer-term trends based on a comparison of three data sets now available.
Learning About Climate Change the Pacific Way: a Guide for Pacific Teachers
Learning About Climate Change the Pacific Way: a Guide for Pacific Teachers
A picture based education resource for students, teachers and facilitators.
Legal Frameworks for Ecosystem-Based Adaptation to Climate Change in the Pacific Islands
This report is primarily directed to analysing the legal aspects of ecosystem-based adaptation to climate change.
Lifou Declaration
The Lifou Declaration (3rd Oceania 21 Summit, Loyalty islands, New Caledonia, 30 April 2015)
Machine learning prediction of connectivity, biodiversity and resilience in the Coral Triangle
Even optimistic climate scenarios predict catastrophic consequences for coral reef ecosystems by 2100. Understanding how reef connectivity, biodiversity and resilience are shaped by climate variability would improve chances to establish sustainable management practices.
Managing Mangroves for Resilience to Climate Change
McLeod, E and Salm, R.V. 2006. Managing Mangroves for Resilience to Climate Change. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland
Mangrove reforestation provides greater blue carbon benefit than afforestation for mitigating global climate change
Significant efforts have been invested to restore mangrove forests worldwide through reforestation and afforestation. However, blue carbon benefit has not been compared between these two silvicultural pathways at the global scale.
Marine conservation in Oceania: Past, present, and future
In this article, I explore the knowledge and values that allowed the people of Oceania to develop sustainable use of their marine resources, followed by the demise of these systems after western colonization and the breakdown of traditional societies.
Marshall Islands' National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan
The purpose of this Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (BSAP) is to Assist the Marshall Islands to Plan for the Conservation of its biodiversity and for in the sustainable use of its biological resources.
Measuring Temperature in Coral Reef Environments: Experience, Lessons, and Results from Palau
Sea surface temperature, determined remotely by satellite (SSST), measures only the thin “skin” of the ocean but is widely used to quantify the thermal regimes on coral reefs across the globe.
Minimizing cross-realm threats from land-use change: A national-scale conservation framework connecting land, freshwater and marine systems
There is a growing recognition that conservation strategies should be designed accounting for cross-realm connections, such as freshwater connections to land and sea, to ensure effectiveness of marine spatial protection and minimize perverse outcomes of changing land-use.
MIT Climate CoLab
MIT Climate CoLab (www.climatecolab.org) is an online crowdsourcing platform of over
National mitigation potential from natural climate solutions in the tropics
Better land stewardship is needed to achieve the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal, particularly in the tropics, where greenhouse gas emissions from the destruction of ecosystems are largest, and where the potential for additional land carbon storage is greatest.
Nature-based solutions for adapting to water-related climate risks
Countries are facing a pressing, complex and interlinked set of environmental crises.
Nature-Based Solutions for Urban Climate Change Adaptation and Wellbeing: Evidence and Opportunities From Kiribati, Samoa, and Vanuatu
Climate change and urbanisation in combination put great pressure on terrestrial and ocean ecosystems, vital for subsistence and wellbeing in both rural and urban areas of Pacific islands. Adaptation is urgently required.
Navigating transformation of biodiversity and climate
This planet is the home of life, born into existence and transformed over 3.8 billion years into a continuous tapestry, covering all possible places from the deep ocean floors to mountain summits.
Ocean acidification and interactive stressors - from challenges to actions
The ocean has been experiencing substantial changes in marine physics, chemistry and biology including ocean acidification, rising seawater temperature, ocean deoxygenation and sea level rise.
Ocean Acidification in the Pacific Islands Region
Ocean Acidification in the Pacific Islands Region
•CO2 is an acid gas (it produces acid when combined with water)
Out of the Blue - The Value of Seagrasses to the Environment and to People
Seagrasses are one of the most valuable coastal and marine ecosystems on the planet, providing a range of critical environmental, economic and social benefits.
Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change
Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change
Building Resilience to Climate Change in Pacific Communities
Pacific Coral Reef Action Plan 2021–2030
Many Pacific coral reefs are being damaged by habitat disturbance, pollution, fishing and climate change. Climate change is believed to be the greatest human-induced threat to corals in the Pacific region. The region needs an action plan to make cohesive decisions that will benefit coral reefs.
Pacific Islands Climate Change Cooperative
The Pacific Islands Climate Change Cooperative (PICCC), headquartered in Honolulu, but working across the Pacific, integrates local climate models with models of climate-change responses by species, habit
Pathways to sustaining tuna-dependent Pacific Island economies during climate change
Climate-driven redistribution of tuna threatens to disrupt the economies of Pacific Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and sustainable management of the world’s largest tuna fishery.
Proceedings & Findings of the 1st National Environment Symposium, August 2016
Demonstrating the remarkable power of collaboration and big thinking that Palau so often exhibits, in 2016 a diverse partnership produced the nation’s 1st National Environment Symposium.
Promoting Synergies Between Climate Change Adaptation and Biodiversity
This technical brief is a joint collaboration with the Nairobi work programme expert group on biodiversity and climate change adaptation and has been published as a supplement to the NAP technical guidelines.
Protected Area Governance and Management
This book has been prepared as a contribution to the IUCN World Parks Congress in Sydney in 2014. The global community is at the interface of ensuring the quality of protected area governance and management, together with the way that effectively managed and
Protected Areas and Climate Change
Janishevski, L. and Gidda, S.B. 2010. Protected Areas and Climate Change. Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (SCBD) and UNEP; Issue Paper No. 6
Protected Areas as Tools for Disaster Risk Reduction - A handbook for practitioners.
The following handbook provides practical guidance on the effective use of protected areas as tools to reduce the likelihood and impacts of disasters.
Protected-area targets could be undermined by climate change-driven shifts in ecoregions and biomes
Expanding the global protected area network is critical for addressing biodiversity declines and the climate crisis. However, how climate change will affect ecosystem representation within the protected area network remains unclear.
Rebuilding marine life
Sustainable Development Goal 14 of the United Nations aims to “conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development”.
Reef Rehabilitation Manual
Edwards, A.J. (ed.) 2010. Reef Rehabilitation Manual. Coral Reef Targeted Research & Capacity Building for Management Program: St Lucia, Australia.
Republic of Fiji National Ocean Policy 2020-2030
Fijians have been at the forefront of ocean action and leadership because it i our responsibility as an oceanic people. Fiji is a nation of over 300 islands whose past, present and future are intrinsically linked to the ocean.
Rigorously Valuing the Role of U.S. Coral Reefs in Coastal Hazard Risk Reduction
The degradation of coastal habitats, particularly coral reefs, raises risks by increasing the exposure of coastal communities to flooding hazards.
Risk-sensitive planning for conserving coral reefs under rapid climate change
Saving the ocean and climate through innovative marine protected area finance mechanisms
Ocean threats: acidification, deoxygenation, warming, heatwaves. Do we have anything useful to bend, change, or reverse the results?
Scientists’ warning – The outstanding biodiversity of islands is in peril
Despite islands contributing only 6.7% of land surface area, they harbor ~20% of the Earth’s biodiversity, but unfortunately also ~50% of the threatened species and 75% of the known extinctions since the European expansion around the globe.
Sinking Islands, Drowned Logic; Climate Change and Community-Based Adaptation Discourses in Solomon Islands
The saltwater people of Solomon Islands are often portrayed to be at the frontline of climate change. In media, policy, and development discourses, the erosion and abandonment of the small, man-made islands along the coast of Malaita is attributed to climate change induced sea-level rise.
