Lessons learned from five years of nature conservation and development in South Pacific Islands

Abstract

The GEF-PAS Forest and Protected Area Management in Fiji, Samoa, Vanuatu and Niue has been a five-year project implemented by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. The project’s environmental objective is to strengthen biodiversity conservation and reduce forest and land degradation. Its developmental objective is to enhance the sustainable livelihoods of local communities living in and around existing or potential protected areas. The project has worked at the interface of these two objectives in the four countries above with a range of activities structured within six technical components: 1) policy and legal reform; 2) extension and consolidation of the protected area network; 3) strengthening capacity for protected area and community-based conservation management; 4) developing mechanisms for sustainable protected areas financing; 5) sustainable use of biodiversity; and 6) sustainable land management in forest margins. The project has been designed with the objective to assist the countries achieving the Aichi targets of the Convention of Biodiversity and in particular to contribute to the Aichi target to protect at least 17 % of each countries’ terrestrial area.