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This report presents the initial action undertaken by UNEP immediately following the cessation of hostilities in the Gaza Strip in January 2009, and summarizes the scientific findings of the complex assessment process carried out by UNEP during the spring and early summer of 2009. Recommendations are provided for the remediation of environmental damage caused by the recent escalation of hostilities, as well as for longer-term improvement of the environment in the Gaza Strip.

A thin veneer of atmosphere, soil, and water covers the surface of the planet. That is the envelope supplying most of the raw material we need to live. Energy from the Sun, with some residual energy still within the planet’s core, feeds Earth’s dynamic systems that cycle materials within the envelope. Earth System scientists are investigating the energy and material fluxes that determine the systems’ dynamics to better understand climate change. This Compendium presents some of the vanguard science and conceptual advances under discussion and published by researchers since 2007 that explores the challenge presented by climate change. Rapidly developing tools—that allow fast and accurate readings of environmental conditions, that compile and analyze data series of increasing complexities at unprecedented rates, and that allow insights into fluxes of energy and material at micro and macro scales—have accelerated the rate at which vanguard science is being produced.

The Palolo Deep Marine Reserve is a fringing reef encompassing a lagoon comprising a total area of 137.5 hectares. The area was initially folmalised as a Marine Reserve in 1974 under the National Parks and Reserves Act though no management plan had been prepared. This report is to provide a greater understanding of the marine environment within the Reserve. A basic inventor-v- and classification of the marine environment was undertaken together with provision for continued monitoring.