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This guide helps communities understand the pressures people may place on beaches, and suggests how natural processes or "ecosystem based approaches" can be used to encourage sand to come back and stay put. Beaches have important values for local communities, such as for fishing, tourism, recreation, and low tide gathering and gleaning. Local communities are an essential part of keeping beaches healthy and can use low cost, natural ways to make beaches stronger

In 2010, under Kiribati’s Programme of Work for Protected Areas (PoWPA), a national ecological gap analysis (GA) was conducted. Its main purpose was to assess how effective the current Protected Areas (PA) network was at achieving Kiribati’s National Biodiversity Strategies Action Plan (NBSAP) conservation targets, and in particular to identify priority areas for the expansion of the PA network and priority actions for improved management of existing PAs. A complementary objective was to identify the key gaps in our knowledge of the country’s biodiversity. The Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) and Conservation International’s Pacific Islands Program (CI-PIP) provided technical support to the Kiribati Ministry of Environment, Lands and Agricultural Development (MELAD) to conduct a GA of Key Biodiversity Areas (KBA – areas of high biodiversity and conservation value) in Kiribati, and provided advisory support for its PA network design. The KBA approach was applied at the archipelago (Gilbert, Line and Phoenix Islands) level combining terrestrial, coastal and lagoon habitats. The KBA methodology applied here is based on an international standard methodology that focuses on worldwide threatened species. KBA sites – all designated at the island level - were identified based on the presence of globally threatened species. The KBA sites (Islands) were then prioritized based on three additional criteria including the frequency of species of local concern as identified by the NBSAP, Kiribati Adaptation Plan (KAP) II mangroves, and the PoWPA phase one consultations; areas of expert concern; and a habitat metric based on habitat diversity and numerical analysis of habitat types.

The nations of CARICOM16 in the Caribbean together with Pacific island countries contribute less than 1% to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (approx. 0.33%17 and 0.03%18 respectively), yet these countries are expected to be among the earliest and most impacted by climate change in the coming decades and are least able to adapt to climate change impacts. These nations’ relative isolation, small land masses, their concentrations of population and infrastructure in coastal areas, limited economic base and dependency on natural resources, combined with limited financial, technical and institutional capacity all exacerbates their vulnerability to extreme events and climate change impacts. Stabilising global GHG emissions and obtaining greater support for adaptation strategies are fundamental priorities for the Caribbean Basin and Pacific island countries. CARICOM leaders recently unveiled their collective position that global warming should be held to no more than 1.5°C19 and continue to develop a Climate Change Strategic Plan. The Pacific island countries have expressed their priorities for addressing climate change regionally through the Pacific Leaders’ Call to Action on Climate Change20 and the Pacific Islands Framework for Action on Climate Change 2006-2015.21