Tuna Fishery Report Card 2018
Global Conservation Status of Turtles and Tortoises
Conservation Status of Marine Biodiversity in Oceania.
Assessing compensation for the wrongful loss of customary land
CURRENT TRENDS IN LANGUAGE SKILLS AND ETHNO-BIOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE
Papua New Guinea terrestrial-vertebrate richness
Climate change and Marine
Significant international climate finance opportunities are imminent. Pending final policy design, new international climate finance frameworks (e.g. the New Market Mechanisms under the UNFCCC, and Carbon Offset Reduction Scheme for International Aviation - CORSIA) will present substantial opportunities for Papua New Guinea (PNG) to tap into and support sustainable resource management projects in its forestry, agriculture (and fishery) sectors – providing jobs and economic growth, boosting food security, and helping meet international and domestic climate change commitments e.g.
Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) forests are under pressure from several land uses such as small-scale agriculture and commercial agriculture, among others. These activities result in deforestation with diverse dynamics at the province level. It is therefore necessary to understand how drivers of deforestation influence the deforestation process and to predict what would be their future dynamics to identify where and when deforestation will take place. It is under this framework that UNDP, in close collaboration with PNGFA, decided to develop an agricultural mapping assessment in PNG.
Papua New Guinea (PNG) stands at a critical moment in its development. With Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth of over 20 per cent expected for 2015, following the start of production from the massive PNG Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) project, the country has a unique opportunity to leverage significant sustainable and equitable improvements in levels of health, education, income and other elements of inclusive human development.
Changing temperature and precipitation pattern and increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO2 are likely to drive significant modifications in natural and modified forests. Our review is focused on recent publications that discuss the changes in commercial forestry, excluding the ecosystem functions of forests and nontimber forest products. We concentrate on potential direct and indirect impacts of climate change on forest industry, the projections of future trends in commercial forestry, the possible role of biofuels, and changes in supply and demand.
There is growing evidence that global climate change is significantly altering forest ecosystems, and will continue to do so in the future. Changes in mean climate and climate extremes such as drought, storms, cyclones and wildfires can fundamentally alter species distribution, composition, phenology, and forest structure. This study reviewed the available evidence of climate change impacts on tropical forests. We selected 85 studies based on two selection criterias and recorded the impacts of climate change on different areas of tropicalforests.
Australia has a highly diverse and variable climate and its forests evolved under a relatively high level of climatic variation. However, human-induced changes in climate are likely to exceed historical ranges of variability and rates of change, and have effects on forests well beyond the experience of forest managers. These conditions will require implementation of management practices appropriate to a changing climate.
Nearly 4 % of the world’s forests are plantations, established to provide a variety of ecosystem services, principally timber and other wood products. In addition to such services, plantation forests provide direct and indirect benefits to biodiversity via the provision of forest habitat for a wide range of species, and by reducing negative impacts on natural forests by offsetting the need to extract resources. There is compelling evidence that climate change is directly affecting biodiversity in forests throughout the world.
Forest plantations are a possible way of increasing forest productivity in temperate and tropical forests, and therefore also increasing above- and belowground carbon pools. In the context of climate change, monospecific plantations might become an alternative to mitigate global warming; however, their contribution to the structural complexity, complementarity, and biodiversity of forests has not been addressed.
Tropical reforestation (TR) has been highlighted as an important intervention for climate change mitigation because of its carbon storage potential. TR can also play other frequently overlooked, but significant, roles in helping society and ecosystems adapt to climate variability and change. For example, reforestation can ameliorate climate-associated impacts of altered hydrological cycles in watersheds, protect coastal areas from increased storms, and provide habitat to reduce the probability of species’ extinctions under a changing climate.
We present a review and analysis of the conservation status and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) threat categories of all 360 currently recognized species of extant and recently extinct turtles and tortoises (Order Testudines). Our analysis is based on the 2018 IUCN Red List status of 251 listed species, augmented by provisional Red List assessments by the IUCN Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group (TFTSG) of 109 currently unlisted species of tortoises and freshwater turtles, as well as re-assessments of several outdated IUCN Red
Given the economic and cultural dependence on the marine environment in Oceania and a rapidly expanding human population, many marine species populations are in decline and may be vulnerable to extinction from a number of local and regional threats.