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Asian Development Bank member fact sheet. ADB assistance to Samoa supports improvements in the delivery of basic social services, and provision of safer and more efficient road and maritime transportation, better internet connectivity, and effective disaster relief.

Economic growth and investment in infrastructure go hand in hand. A growing economy needs constantly improved infrastructure to ensure that the production and exchange of goods and services happens as smoothly and efficiently as possible

A rapidly growing population, poor human development indicators, and climate change risk exposure demand a public investment policy that is effective so as to ensure the sustainable growth and development of the Solomon Islands

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development places gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls at the heart of its implementation with its promise to “leave no one behind”.

This handbook serves as a guide to the applications, technologies, business models, and regulations that should be considered when evaluating the feasibility of a battery energy storage system (BESS) project.

ABSTRACT: Coastal fish populations are typically threatened by multiple human activities, including fishing pressure and run-off of terrestrial pollution. Linking multiple threats to their impacts on fish populations is challenging because the threats may influence a species directly, or indirectly, via its habitats and its interactions with other species. Here we examine spatial variation in abundance of coral reef fish across gradients of fishing pressure and turbidity in Fiji. We explicitly account for multiple pathways of influence to test the alternative hypotheses that (1) habitat moderates predation by providing shelter, so habitat loss only affects prey fish populations if there are abundant predators, (2) habitat change co-drives biomass of both prey and predator functional groups. We examined responses of 7 fish functional groups and found that habitat change co-drives both predator and prey responses to turbidity. Abundances of all functional groups were associated with changes in habitat cover; however, the responses of their habitats to turbidity were mixed. Planktivore and piscivore abundance were lower in areas of high turbidity, because cover of their preferred habitats was lower. Invertivore, browser and grazer abundance did not change strongly over the turbidity gradient, because different components of their habitats exhibited both increases and decreases with turbidity. The effects of turbidity on fish populations were minor in areas where fish populations were already depleted by fishing. These findings suggest that terrestrial run-off modifies the composition of reef fish communities indirectly by affecting the benthic habitats that reef fish use.

Coastal ecosystems can be degraded by poor water quality. Tracing the causes of poor water quality back to land-use change is necessary to target catchment management for coastal zone management. However, existing models for tracing the sources of pollution require extensive data-sets which are not available for many of the world’s coral reef regions that may have severe water quality issues. Here we develop a hierarchical Bayesian model that uses freely available satellite data to infer the connection between land-uses in catchments and water clarity in coastal oceans. We apply the model to estimate the influence of land-use change on water clarity in Fiji. We tested the model’s predictions against underwater surveys, finding that predictions of poor water quality are consistent with observations of high siltation and low coverage of sediment-sensitive coral genera. The model thus provides a means to link land-use change to declines in coastal water quality

The Asia and Pacific region is extremely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Unabated warming could significantly undo previous achievements of economic development and improvements of living standards. At the same time, the region has both the economic capacity and weight of influence to change the present fossil-fuel based development pathway and curb global emissions. This report sheds light on the regional implications of the latest projections of changes in climate conditions over Asia and the Pacific. The assessment concludes that, even under the Paris consensus scenario in which global warming is limited to 1.5°C to 2°C above preindustrial levels, some of the land area, ecosystems, and socioeconomic sectors will be significantly affected by climate change impacts, to which policy makers and the investment community need to adapt to. However, under a Business-As-Usual (BAU) scenario, which will cause a global mean temperature rise of over 4°C by the end of this century, the possibilities for adaptation are drastically reduced. Among others, climate change impacts such as the deterioration of the Asian “water towers”, prolonged heat waves, coastal sea-level rise and changes in rainfall patterns could disrupt ecosystem services and lead to severe effects on livelihoods which in turn would affect human health, migration dynamics and the potential for conflicts. This assessment also underlines that, for many areas vital to the region’s economy, research on the effects of climate change is still lacking.

Rodents remain one of the most widespread and damaging invasive alien species on islands globally. The current toolbox for insular rodent eradications is reliant on the application of sufficient anticoagulant toxicant into every potential rodent territory across an island. Despite significant advances in the use of these toxicants over recent decades, numerous situations remain where eradication is challenging or not yet feasible. These include islands with significant human populations, unreceptive stakeholder communities, co-occurrence of livestock and domestic animals, or vulnerability of native species. Developments in diverse branches of science, particularly the medical, pharmaceutical, invertebrate pest control, social science, technology and defense fields offer potential insights into the next generation of tools to eradicate rodents from islands. Horizon scanning is a structured process whereby current problems are assessed against potential future solutions. We undertook such an exercise to identify the most promising technologies, techniques and approaches that might be applied to rodent eradications from islands. We highlight a Rattus-specific toxicant, RNA interference as species-specific toxicants, rodenticide research, crab deterrent in baits, prophylactic treatment for protection of non-target species, transgenic rodents, virus vectored immunocontraception, drones, self-resetting traps and toxicant applicators, detection probability models and improved stakeholder community engagement methods. We present a brief description of each method, and discuss its application to rodent eradication on islands, knowledge gaps, challenges, whether it is incremental or transformative in nature and provide a potential timeline for availability. We outline how a combination of new tools may render previously intractable rodent eradication problems feasible.