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The Pacific Islands Forum in 2005 adopted the Pacific Plan to strengthen and deepen regional cooperation and integration. Subsequently Leaders agreed that a regional institutional framework (RIF) that is appropriate to the development of the Pacific Plan be established. As part of the RIF review process the three CEOs of SOPAC, SPC and SPREP commissioned a two-part consultancy in early 2009. Part One was to analyse, assess and validate their proposed regional institutional arrangement to rationalise SOPAC’s work programme. Part Two was to consider the practical implications, including administrative, programmatic, and other issues relevant to the proposed new arrangements.

The Man and the Biosphere (MAB) programme of UNESCO, first thought of in 1968, launched in 1970 and endorsed by the Stockholm Conference of 1972, includes a number of scientific projects, of which No. 7 is devoted to the Ecology and Rational Utilization of Island Ecosystems. All the programmes are to be interdisciplinary and intergovernmental. Among member countries which developed their own national plans within the framework of the separate MAB projects, France drafted a vigorous one in MAB 7 in French Polynesia, under the leadership of Dr. B. Salvat (1977). The French programme includes a detailed study of an atoll, Takapoto in the Tuamotus, and comparison of its ecosystems and their functioning with those of a high island already under scrutiny, Moorea in the Society Islands.

The archipelago of the Society Islands, in the South Pacific, includes principally high volcanic islands, with fringing or barrier reefs, but also a number of outlying atolls: Tetiaroa, due north of Tahiti, Tupai or Motu-Iti, north-northwest of Bora-Bora and, at the west end of the volcanic chain, Maupihaa or Mopelia, Scilly or Fenua Ura or Manuae, and Bellingshausen (often spelled Bellinghausen) or Motu One.