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ADB operations in Vanuatu supports three priority sectors: energy, transport, and water and other urban infrastructure and services

What is asbestos? Asbestos is a naturally occurring rock fibre that can be harmful to humans. Consequently, asbestos is now banned from most modern products, but remains a serious legacy issue in the Pacific from its past widespread use in the building materials.

Since thousands of years, the human race has been developing cultural skills and technological capabilities that support its struggle for survival and lead to dominance over all other species. Since about a century, the exponential growth of knowledge, technology, industry and population (see Fig. 1.1) has reached a scale where man modifies biosphere to an extent, that living conditions on the whole planet earth start to change significantly. Resources that had been abundant are becoming scarce within decades. We have arrived in the Anthropocene [1] where man has a significant impact on the basic living conditions of the biosphere of the whole planet. A continuation of this growth rate will unavoidably reach its natural limits where resources vanish; the biosphere will change more rapidly than the ability of organisms and ecosystems to accommodate, and contaminations will endanger living. When such a condition is reached, it is likely that our human civilization will collapse and human population will diminish rapidly. Historic examples demonstrated that drought, hunger, wars and epidemics were typical endpoints of drastic environmental changes and overpopulation. While historic examples mostly affected only individual towns, islands, countries or indigenous nations, the limits of growth this time affect the whole planet and there is no “new world” to which our civilization can migrate. Recent research has proven that the era of a new biological mass extinction has already started [2] and it can be assumed that finally also our species will be affected.

Crisis has enveloped the more than 200,000 nationally and regionally protected natural and cultural heritage sites around the world. Heritage managers - those who manage natural sites such as national parks, wilderness areas, and biosphere reserves, as well as those who manage cultural sites including historic monuments, battlefields, heritage cities, and ancient rock art sites - face an urgent need to confront this crisis, and each day that they don't, more of our planet's common heritage disappears. Although heritage management and implementation suffer from a lack of money, time, personnel, information, and political will, The Future Has Other Plans argues that deeper causes to current problems lurk in the discipline itself. Drawing on decades of practical experience in global heritage management and case studies from around the world, Jon Kohl and Steve McCool provide an innovative solution for conserving these valuable protected areas. Merging interdisciplinary and evolving management paradigms, the authors introduce a new kind of holistic planning approach that integrates the practice of heritage management and conservation with operational realities.

A patchwork of international bodies and treaties manage ocean resources and human activity in areas beyond any state’s national jurisdiction (see Table 1). However, these governance bodies vary greatly in terms of their mandate, which determines their geographic scope, their objective, the legally binding nature of decisions they adopt, and whether they regulate one or several activities. Their jurisdictions often overlap, but virtually no mechanisms exist to coordinate across geographic areas and sectors.1 Too often, this piecemeal governance approach leads to the degradation of the environment and its resources, and makes deploying management and conservation tools such as environmental impact assessments and marine protected areas (MPAs), including marine reserves, challenging both legally and logistically

The freshwater ichthyofauna of the Fiji islands remained poorly documented before the establishment of the Pacific-Asia Biodiversity Transect (PABITRA) network. The PABITRA approach assesses biodiversity along ocean-to-mountain transects and promotes sustainable land use on islands across the Pacific. Multiple surveys of freshwater fish species along the Viti Levu PABITRA transect have contributed six new occurrence records and one new species to the known freshwater fishes of Fiji since 2002. In total, 21 indigenous species of fish (9% endemic) from 10 families and no introduced fishes were found in the three PABITRA sites. Diversity was highest (16 species) at Savura forest reserve and decreased further inland into Sovi and Wabu. The assemblage found is dominated by highly migratory species (95%) that traverse the different aquatic habitats (marine, estuarine, lowland and upland streams) covered by the PABITRA transect. This high degree of connectivity highlights several growing issues affecting aquatic fauna on the high island of Viti Levu. The reduction in forest cover along the gateway transects, especially in the terminal reaches, and infrastructure development such as dams and weirs have deleterious effects on the migration routes of the Fijian ichthyofauna. Several species collected are important food sources and have cultural totemic importance to local inhabitants along the vertical transect. This paper documents the ichthyofauna of the Fiji gateway transect, ecological characteristics of this assemblage, IUCN Redlist conservation assessment status and highlights factors affecting the fragility and resilience of these communities, particularly focusing on the importance of life-history patterns and watershed conditions.

A study tour of restoration projects was conducted for seven participants from four Polynesian countries (American Samoa, Niue, Samoa and Tonga) between March 20 and 27, 2015 to Auckland, New Zealand. All participants are involved in restoration projects in their home country, most funded under the GEF-PAS "Prevention, control and management of invasive alien species in the Pacific Islands" Project. Seven restoration sites were visited, including 3 island sites and 4 mainland sites. The site provide a range of available management options including isolated open sanctuary islands, predator-proof fenced peninsulas, virtual "fenced" reserves and urban parklands.

The 17th Annual Meetiig of the Pacific Islands Roundtable for Nature Conservation was convened in Madi on the 15th May, 2014. The meeting object ves were to: Discuss PIRT core business which included membership, secretariat support, working groups and administrative operations of PIRT Report Dack on outcomes of the 9th Pacific Islands Conference including follow up actions. Discuss and agree on process for endorsement including implementation of the Framework for nature conservation and orotected areas in the Pacific Islands region 2014-2020. Priorities and oppo-tunities for PIRT including key events in 2014