Living Archipelagos Presentation Abstracts

Honolulu Workshop
April 14, 2004
Population and Development in the Pacific Islands

By Nancy D. Lewis, Director, Research Program, East-WestCenter, Honolulu, Hawaii

The twenty-two nations, states and territories (excluding Hawaii and New Zealand) span a vast distance across the Pacific. They are variously endowed with natural resources and fall in different places on the continuum of economic “development.” The island types range from continental islands like the large, mountainous half of the island of New Guinea, which Papua New Guinea shares with Irian Jaya, to volcanic islands, like the main islands of Fiji, to the tiny coral atolls of the central and eastern Pacific, e.g., Kiribati. The populations of the Pacific vary to from 1537 people in Tokelau to 5,190 786 in Papua New Guinea. 86% of the population of the region and 98% of the land area is in Melanesia, 8% of the population and 1.4% of the land area is in Polynesia and 6% of the population is in Micronesia. Political instability characterizes several of the island states, particularly in Melanesia. A brief overview of the population and development issues will be presented with some elaboration of the environmental and political context for Small Island Developing States (SIDS) run up to Barbados Plus Ten to be held in Mauritius next September. A focus of that discussion will be the islands in the context of a changing climate.

Technology and Global Economics Have Broadscale Effects on Pacific Island Fisheries

Charles Birkeland, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii

Although information from middens show that Pacific Islanders reduced the easily accessible bird and nearshore invertebrate resources in the past, they also show the nearshore fisheries have been stable over millennia, probably because of constraints of traditional technology. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was an approximately 80% reduction in many fisheries standing stocks in some locations because of the development of technology and global economics. Coral-reef fisheries are especially vulnerable to harvest because of life-history characteristics of reef fishes: right-angle size-age distributions, extensive longevity, increase in fecundity with body size, multiple reproductions, and predictable times and locations of spawning aggregations. These are in striking contrast to characteristics of pelagic fisheries. These allow individual fishermen with modern technology to have a substantial influence on reef-fish populations in a very short time. These substantial effects on fisheries led to “ecosystem overfishing”. Before the early 1980s, coral-reef ecosystems were in a perpetual state of recovery from natural disturbances. But now some of these coral reefs have stopped recovering and are continuing to deteriorate after the disturbance is relieved. It is a common misconception that after the fishing is stopped, the fisheries stocks will always recover. Local community stewardship has been shown in some Hawaiian cases to maintain stocks as high as in no-take reserves.

Climate Change and Sea Level Rise in the Pacific Islands

Michael P. Hamnett, PhD , Social Science Research Institute , University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii

Long-term climate change, seasonal to inter-annual climate variability such as El Niño events, and weather are on a time continuum from days to decades. Solar and lunar tides, changes in sea level over the year and long-term sea level rise are on a similar continuum. The potential impact of long-term climate change and sea level rise must be understood in terms of decadal, seasonal to inter-annual, annual and shorter-term variability. And, some of the most significant impacts on Pacific Island people and their environment are going to be made by extreme weather and oceanographic events: droughts, floods, tropical cyclones, storm surge, tsunamis, and spikes in sea surface temperatures.

The International Panel on Climate Change has agreed that we can expect a 2 °-4 ° C increase in mean global temperatures and a 0.5 meter increase in mean sea level by 2050. A 2 °-4 ° C change in temperature is less of an than we see on a daily basis. Tides in most parts of the Pacific vary more than 0.5 meters on a monthly basis. But, these increases will be added to the changes that take place from season to season, during El Niño and La Niña events, and during storms and tsunamis. And, variability in rainfall (e.g., droughts and floods) over seasons and during ENSO events is in many ways more significant than variations in sea levels and temperature.

As the IPCC has stated:

“Global climate change will affect the physical, biological and biogeochemical characteristics of the oceans and coasts, modifying their ecological structure, their functions, and the goods and services they provide” (IPCC-TAR, p. 345, Chapter 6, Coastal Zones and Marine Ecosystems”).

In the case of small islands, coastal vulnerability to climate change will be enhanced as a consequence of:

The most significant impacts on Pacific people and their environment will be water shortages, agricultural losses, changes in fisheries, an increase in other disaster losses, coastal inundation, an increase in the risk of some diseases, and ecological changes that will affect island ecosystems. These in turn will have other environmental and social consequences.

Visual Journey Through the Living Archipelagos of Oceania

Jim Maragos, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Honolulu, Hawaii

This photo essay covers the seascapes, landscapes, and peoples of more than 35 sites and years of visits to selected atolls, reefs and archipelagos in the broad central Pacific region of Oceania, proposed or suggested as Living Archipelagos. The archipelagos cover 10 nations or territories in the Line, Phoenix, Marshall, Caroline, Samoan, Fiji, and Solomon islands. The selected individual islands, atolls or submerged reefs include Ailinginae, Angaur, Aunu‘u, Babeldaob, Baker, Bikar, Bokaak, Chelbacheb, Chuuk, Erikub, Helen, Howland, Jarvis, Kayangel, Kingman, Kiritimati, Koror, Kosrae, Marovo, Mborokua, Minto, Ngeruangl, Ofu, Olosega, Oroluk, Palmyra, Pohnpei, Rongerik, Rose, Swains, Taveuni, Ta‘u, Tobi, Upolu, Vanua Levu, Viti Levu, and Wotto. Additional photos and information about these and other candidate sites are found at website www.livingarchipelagos.org .

The Polynesia-Micronesia Hotspot and Ecosystem Profile

James Atherton , Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund, Apia , Samoa

The Polynesia-Micronesia hotspot is one of 25 global biodiversity “hotspots”. Together, these hotspots contain more than 60 percent of the Earth’s terrestrial species diversity in just 1.4 percent of the land surface. A special fund, termed the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) has been established to improve protection of the world's threatened biodiversity hotspots. Over the past year, the CEPF have sponsored the development of an Ecosystem Profile (EP) for the Polynesia-Micronesia hotspot. The EP provides an overview of biodiversity values, conservation targets or “outcomes” and causes of biodiversity loss coupled with an assessment of existing and planned conservation activities in the hotspot. This information is then used to identify the niche where CEPF investment can provide the greatest incremental value for conservation in the hotspot.

The EP process for the Polynesia-Micronesia region is now nearing completion. A major finding of the analysis is that the biodiversity of the hotspot is highly threatened. There are currently 476 globally threatened terrestrial species in the hotspot and species extinction rates for some groups, such as birds and land snails, are amongst the highest in the world, especially when calculated per unit of land area or per capita. Furthermore, only about 20% of the vegetation remains in a natural state, the rest is highly degraded. The major threats to Pacific biota are anthropogenic and include invasive alien species, habitat alteration and loss, destructive harvesting and the over-exploitation of natural resources. Unfortunately however, current terrestrial species and site conservation efforts in the hotspot are not well supported.

Conservation targets have been developed to conserve threatened terrestrial species in the hotspot, including a prioritised list of 244 species and 150 sites where they occur. Furthermore, a number of conservation strategies have been developed including: the prevention, control and eradication of invasive species in key biodiversity sites; improvements in the conservation status and management of a prioritised set of key biodiversity sites; safeguarding and restoring a prioritised set of threatened species; and supporting civil society capacity to conserve prioritised species and sites. It is hoped that funds will be available from the CEPF for conservation actions in the hotspot, later in 2004.