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| | | South Pacific Regional Environment Program Large Marine Ecosystem |
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| | The Southwestern Pacific Ecosystem | | |  | | The South Pacific region comprises almost 38.5 million square kilometers, with less than two percent of that vast area constituting the land base shared by Pacific SIDS. This vast and complex marine system contains an enormous and largely undocumented array of diversity. It is known in general, however, that the region contains the most extensive and biologically diverse reefs in the world, the deepest ocean trenches, deep-sea minerals, the world’s largest tuna fishery, as well as an array of globally threatened species such as sea turtles and dugongs. The many thousands of islands are, with the exception of some larger Melanesian Islands, entirely coastal in nature, often with limited freshwater resources and surrounded by a rich variety of ecosystems including mangroves, seagrass beds, estuarine lagoons and coral reefs. In addition to significant biodiversity value, these coastal and marine ecosystems support large subsistence and commercial fisheries. The fisheries are the major source of subsistence protein for much of the Pacific and form an indispensable part of the economic fabric, both present and predictable future, for many Pacific SIDS. Despite the remarkable and globally significant biodiversity of the region, and despite the extent to which the present and likely future economic health of the region is based on sustainable coastal and ocean fishery regimes, marine resource conservation and management regimes are currently inadequate. Coastal areas are degraded by increased land based sources of pollution, the modification of critical habitats, and growing, unsustainable exploitation of living and non-living resources. The necessity for a comprehensive and coordinated approach to coastal and oceanic management is made all the more urgent by an increased environmental degradation. This degradation negatively affects the region’s natural resource base that is particularly sensitive to ecological disturbance, highlighted by the fact that the largest number of documented extinctions worldwide has occurred in the islands of the Pacific. Environmental degradation is further underpinned by pressure from growing populations and economic growth curves that are in many cases flat or falling. The biodiversity values and productivity of these resources, which are global in nature, are affected by, among other things, fishing, tourism, infrastructure development, waste disposal, and the introduction of exotic marine organisms - all of which are directly relevant to the health of the region’s shared international waters.
See More... | | | | GEF Project Activities | | | | The long-term objective of this project is to conserve and sustainably manage the coastal and ocean resources in the Pacific Region. Project activities are designed to encourage comprehensive, cross-sectoral, ecosystem based approaches to mitigate and prevent existing imminent threats to International Waters. The SAP provides a regional framework within which actions are identified, developed and implemented. Targeted actions will be carried out in two complementary, linked consultative contexts: Integrated Coastal and Watershed Management (ICWM) and Oceanic Fisheries Management (OFM). ICWM actions will focus on freshwater supplies including groundwater, Marine Protected Area (MPA) enhancement and development, sustainable coastal fisheries, integrated coastal management including tourism development, and activities to demonstrate waste reduction strategies will be stressed. The OFM component will target the Western Pacific Warm Pool ecosystem, whose boundaries correspond almost precisely to the Western Pacific tuna fishery. Participating countries and regional organizations seek to achieve long-term sustainable development of ocean fisheries, explore regional level options to increase domestic benefits from the tuna fishery, increase the contribution of offshore fishery resources to regional economic food security, and divert fishing pressure away from overexploited coastal resources. Interventions will include three other pressing concerns related to SIDS, namely biodiversity, vulnerability to climate change, and land degradation. Management capacity at the individual country and regional level will be strengthened and global benefits would accrue. The project will provide working examples of economies of scale in environmental management.
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