Pacific Islands: 30 by 30

Renewed calls for marine conservation must not bulldoze the democratic route that has allowed small island nations to improve fisheries and incomes without damaging the marine ecology. I wanted to share some concerns regarding the danger that threatens to disrupt the management of the Pacific Islands’ signature fisheries and main independent source of income. There have been renewed calls for 30 per cent marine protected areas (MPAs) that sound suspiciously over-simplistic. Community-conserved areas come at many scales and the Pacific Islands’ chances of ensuring a multinational indigenous conserved area are threatened

Status and potential of locally-managed marine areas in the Pacific Island Region: meeting nature conservation and sustainable livelihood targets through wide-spread implementation of LMMAs

The South Pacific has experienced a remarkable proliferation of Marine Managed Areas in the last decade. These protected areas, implemented by over 500 communities spanning 15 independent countries and territories represent a unique global achievement. The approaches being developed at national levels are built on a unique feature of the region, customary tenure and resource access, and make use of, in most cases, existing community strengths in traditional knowledge and governance, combined with a local awareness of the need for action, resulting in what have been most aptly termed Locally Managed Marine Areas (LMMAs). The main driver in most cases, is a community desire to maintain or improve livelihoods, often related to perceived threats to food security or local economic revenue. In the South Pacific, conservation and sustainable use are often seen as inseparable as part of the surviving concepts of traditional environmental stewardship. The extent of this shift towards Community Based Resource Management in Melanesia and Polynesia is unprecedented on a global scale and is the subject of this report. The benefits of LMMAs and community-based resource management are many. Not least, communities anecdotally report rapid and appreciable increases of marine resources within closed areas. There is also now an increasing body of technical literature which seems to confirm these observations and indeed the potential speed at which this may occur, and these increases seem likely to reflect positive impacts on the biodiversity within these areas. Evidence for significant fishery impacts such as increased landings or catch per unit effort is scarcer, possibly reflecting a greater time period required for such impacts to be observable. The success of these community based management approaches comes at a time when the region faces enormous challenges to food security, biodiversity and adaptation to climate change. The population in the South Pacific is projected to double in the next 30 years. This combined with poor performance of national economies and growing inequalities due to the distribution and access to economic opportunities is leading to problems associated with poverty in most of the independent countries and increased pressure on natural resources leading to erosion of biodiversity and livelihood opportunities, increasingly resulting in conflict and law and order problems. The dependency on fisheries seems likely to spark a crisis of considerable proportions, particularly in Melanesia where high population growth and predominantly rural populations with few economic alternatives have projected food requirements well in excess of what coastal areas are currently likely to produce without significant improvements in management and productivity. These pressures are already taking their toll on biodiversity and ecosystem integrity, which is of great concern as the Pacific region is one of the world’s centres of biodiversity, or species richness (i.e. endemism), possessing the most extensive coral reef systems. Countries are attempting to manage vast tracks of coastline comparable in extent to those in developed neighbours but with virtually insignificant budgets for this purpose, consequently, low cost self-sustaining management options are required. A regional inventory of LMMAs has been compiled as a main output of the current study, drawing on and complementing two previous attempts. Data captured prior to the study appears to be extremely variable, generally under-reporting active Community Conserved Areas (CCAs) and vastly inflating MMA coverage with inactive or inappropriate sites, particularly in Tonga, PNG and Solomon Islands. Data captured during the present study, current up to January 2008, was compared with data provided by the World Database of Protected Areas (WDPA) and used in place of “official” country lists (which were lacking except for Tonga, Cook Islands, New Caledonia and French Polynesia). The results show that a locally managed approach to protected areas is virtually the only approach to Marine Managed Areas (MMAs) actively pursued at present in the independent countries of the Pacific Islands Region. Most countries do not maintain an up to date national list and hitherto reliance has been on data voluntarily submitted to the WDPA. Given the discrepancies detected in global PA databases, the figures for LMMAs collected in this inventory provide the best picture of current MMA coverage of some 30,000 km2

Status and potential of locally-managed marine areas in the Pacific Island Region: meeting nature conservation and sustainable livelihood targets through wide-spread implementation of LMMAs

The South Pacific has experienced a remarkable proliferation of Marine Managed Areas in the last decade. These protected areas, implemented by over 500 communities spanning 15 independent countries and territories represent a unique global achievement. The approaches being developed at national levels are built on a unique feature of the region, customary tenure and resource access, and make use of, in most cases, existing community strengths in traditional knowledge and governance, combined with a local awareness of the need for action, resulting in what have been most aptly termed Locally Managed Marine Areas (LMMAs). The main driver in most cases, is a community desire to maintain or improve livelihoods, often related to perceived threats to food security or local economic revenue. In the South Pacific, conservation and sustainable use are often seen as inseparable as part of the surviving concepts of traditional environmental stewardship. The extent of this shift towards Community Based Resource Management in Melanesia and Polynesia is unprecedented on a global scale and is the subject of this report. The benefits of LMMAs and community-based resource management are many. Not least, communities anecdotally report rapid and appreciable increases of marine resources within closed areas. There is also now an increasing body of technical literature which seems to confirm these observations and indeed the potential speed at which this may occur, and these increases seem likely to reflect positive impacts on the biodiversity within these areas. Evidence for significant fishery impacts such as increased landings or catch per unit effort is scarcer, possibly reflecting a greater time period required for such impacts to be observable. The success of these community based management approaches comes at a time when the region faces enormous challenges to food security, biodiversity and adaptation to climate change. The population in the South Pacific is projected to double in the next 30 years. This combined with poor performance of national economies and growing inequalities due to the distribution and access to economic opportunities is leading to problems associated with poverty in most of the independent countries and increased pressure on natural resources leading to erosion of biodiversity and livelihood opportunities, increasingly resulting in conflict and law and order problems. The dependency on fisheries seems likely to spark a crisis of considerable proportions, particularly in Melanesia where high population growth and predominantly rural populations with few economic alternatives have projected food requirements well in excess of what coastal areas are currently likely to produce without significant improvements in management and productivity. These pressures are already taking their toll on biodiversity and ecosystem integrity, which is of great concern as the Pacific region is one of the world’s centres of biodiversity, or species richness (i.e. endemism), possessing the most extensive coral reef systems. Countries are attempting to manage vast tracks of coastline comparable in extent to those in developed neighbours but with virtually insignificant budgets for this purpose, consequently, low cost self-sustaining management options are required. A regional inventory of LMMAs has been compiled as a main output of the current study, drawing on and complementing two previous attempts. Data captured prior to the study appears to be extremely variable, generally under-reporting active Community Conserved Areas (CCAs) and vastly inflating MMA coverage with inactive or inappropriate sites, particularly in Tonga, PNG and Solomon Islands. Data captured during the present study, current up to January 2008, was compared with data provided by the World Database of Protected Areas (WDPA) and used in place of “official” country lists (which were lacking except for Tonga, Cook Islands, New Caledonia and French Polynesia). The results show that a locally managed approach to protected areas is virtually the only approach to Marine Managed Areas (MMAs) actively pursued at present in the independent countries of the Pacific Islands Region. Most countries do not maintain an up to date national list and hitherto reliance has been on data voluntarily submitted to the WDPA. Given the discrepancies detected in global PA databases, the figures for LMMAs collected in this inventory provide the best picture of current MMA coverage of some 30,000 km2

Linking small-scale fisheries co-management to U.N. Sustainable Development Goals

Small-scale fisheries account for 90% of global fishers and 40% of the global catch. Effectively managing small-scale fisheries is, therefore, crucial to progressing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Co-management and community-based fisheries management are widely considered the most appropriate forms of governance for many small-scale fisheries. We outlined relationships between small-scale fisheries co-management and attainment of the SDGs, including evidence for impacts and gaps in dominant logic. We identified 11 targets across five SDGs to which small-scale fisheries co-management (including community-based fisheries management) can contribute; the theory of change by which these contributions could be achieved; and the strength of evidence for progress toward SDG targets related to various co-management strategies. Our theory of change links the 11 SDG targets by qualifying that progress toward some targets is contingent on others being achieved first. We then reviewed 58 case studies of co-management impacts from the Pacific Islands––a region rich in local marine governance––to evaluate evidence of where, to what degree, and with how much certainty different co-management strategies conferred positive impacts to each SDG target. These strategies included access restrictions, permanent area closures, periodic closures, and gear and species restrictions. Although many studies provide evidence linking multiple co-management strategies to improvements in resource status (SDG 14.4), there was limited evidence of follow-on effects, such as improvements in catch (SDG 2.3, 2.4), livelihoods (SDG 1.2), consumption (SDG 2.1), and nutrition (SDG 2.2). Our findings suggest that leaps of logic and assumptions are prevalent in co-management planning and evaluation. Hence, when evaluating co-management impacts against the SDGs, consideration of ultimate goals is required, otherwise, there is a risk of shortfalls between aspirations and impact

Destructive fishing : an expert‐driven definition and exploration of this quasi‐concept

Numerous policy and international frameworks consider that “destructive fishing” hampers efforts to reach sustainability goals. Though ubiquitous, “destructive fishing” is undefined and therefore currently immeasurable. Here we propose a definition developed through expert consultation: “Destructive fishing is any fishing practice that causes irrecoverable habitat degradation, or which causes significant adverse environmental impacts, results in long-term declines in target or nontarget species beyond biologically safe limits and has negative livelihood impacts.” We show strong stakeholder support for a definition, consensus on many biological and ecological dimensions, and no clustering of respondents from different sectors. Our consensus definition is a significant step toward defining sustainable fisheries goals and will help interpret and implement global political commitments which utilize the term “destructive fishing.” Our definition and results will help reinforce the Food and Agricultural Organization's Code of Conduct and meaningfully support member countries to prohibit destructive fishing practices

Cymatium muricinum and other ranellid gastropods: major predators of cultured tridacnid clams.

Predators, Predation, Clam culture, Feeding behaviour, Reproduction, Recruitment, Environmental factors, Cymatium muricinum, Tridacnidae, Farm Management,

Towards reducing misrepresentation of national achievements in marine protected area targets

Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) adopted 20 targets, known as the Aichi Targets, to benchmark progress towards protecting biodiversity. These targets include Target 11 relating to Marine Protected Area coverage and the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) is the accepted international database for tracking national commitments to this target. However, measuring national progress towards conservation targets relies on sound data. This paper highlights the large-scale misrepresentation, by up to two orders of magnitude, of national marine protected area coverage from two Pacific Island nations in multiple online databases and subsequent reports, including conclusions regarding achievements of Aichi 11 commitments. It recommends that for the target driven approach to have value, users of the WDPA data should carefully consider its caveats before using their raw data and that countries should strive for a greater degree of accountability. Lastly it also concludes that protected area coverage may not be the best approach to environmental sustainability and that the remaining 19 targets should be considered to a greater extent