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This report presents the findings of the Final Evaluation of the six year1 Global Environment Facility – Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (GEF-FAO) Forest Protected Area Management (FPAM) in Fiji, Samoa, Vanuatu and Niue project, which was implemented between January 2012 and July 2017. The project’s global environmental objective was ‘to strengthen biodiversity conservation and reduce forest and land degradation’ and the development objective was ‘to enhance the sustainable livelihoods of local communities living in and around protected areas’

This booklet is part of a series of compilations assembling PANORAMA solution case studies on a defined topic. “Solutions in Focus” zooms in on a topic of interest covered by PANORAMA, allowing to explore common elements and shared learnings across success stories. It is a snapshot of the PANORAMA portfolio at a given time, rather than a representative assembly of selected “best practices” on the issue at hand.

Full report (Pdf)

During the planning phase the efficacy of different strategies to manage marine resources should ultimately be assessed by their potential impact, or ability to make a difference to ecological and social outcomes. While community-based and systematic approaches to establishing marine protected areas have their strengths and weaknesses, comparisons of their effectiveness often fail to explicitly address potential impact.

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. The current renaissance of customary stewardship has resulted in not only more effective management, but also a cultural reawakening in many of these island nations. The integration of customary and contemporary management regimes holds great promise for reducing reliance on foreign goods and services, while also improving social cohesion.