Pacific Island biodiversity, ecosystems and climate change adaptation: building on nature's resilience + CD - tools and case studies

Abstract

The combined pressures of climate change and development will not only aggravate existing challenges to the conservation of biodiversity in the Pacific, but also introduce new difficulties. There are a wide range of historical, current and planned studies that examine specific aspects of the relationship between climate change, conservation and development in the Pacific. However, resource management decision-makers often aren’t able to allocate sufficient resources to review and synthesize lessons from the fast-moving body of climate change research into information that is directly relevant to their needs. Additionally, there are large gaps in the availability of baseline and monitoring data of species, habitats and ecosystem services that are critical to the livelihoods of the Pacific Island people. This lack of data is reducing the effectiveness of assessments of the vulnerability of the regional economy to climate change; an economy that is heavily dependent on natural resources.