Biodiversity and conservation in the Pacific Islands: why are we not succeeding?

There are more than 25,000 relatively small islands located in the Pacific region. The flora and fauna of these islands are highly diverse, and many of the species that occur in the region have limited ranges and are not found elsewhere in the world. By nature of their small size, the majority of Pacific Islands are ecologically fragile and particularly vulnerable to climate change, overexploitation of natural resources, and invasive species. Many of the human-induced ecosystem changes currently occurring on these fragile islands are irreversible; they often relate to changes in community values and beliefs as well as the growing desire for income generation. In light of the continuing loss of traditional knowledge and practices, we are in dire need of strong, creative, ethical leaders who are not afraid to think outside the box. The education of our Pacific Island youth (emerging leaders) and a considerable strengthening of our human resource development are essential foundations for us to have any chance of making the necessary changes in human behavior needed to achieve long-term conservation success and sustainable environmental practices that will enhance the future health of Pacific Island communities

Biocultural approaches to well-being and sustainability indicators across scales

Monitoring and evaluation are central to ensuring that innovative, multi-scale, and interdisciplinary approaches to sustainability are effective. The development of relevant indicators for local sustainable management outcomes, and the ability to link these to broader national and international policy targets, are key challenges for resource managers, policymakers, and scientists. Sets of indicators that capture both ecological and social-cultural factors, and the feedbacks between them, can underpin cross-scale linkages that help bridge local and global scale initiatives to increase resilience of both humans and ecosystems. Here we argue that biocultural approaches, in combination with methods for synthesizing across evidence from multiple sources, are critical to developing metrics that facilitate linkages across scales and dimensions. Biocultural approaches explicitly start with and build on local cultural perspectives - encompassing values, knowledges, and needs - and recognize feedbacks between ecosystems and human well-being. Adoption of these approaches can encourage exchange between local and global actors, and facilitate identification of crucial problems and solutions that are missing from many regional and international framings of sustainability. Resource managers, scientists, and policymakers need to be thoughtful about not only what kinds of indicators are measured, but also how indicators are designed, implemented, measured, and ultimately combined to evaluate resource use and well-being. We conclude by providing suggestions for translating between local and global indicator efforts