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This book presents the most recent results of a research started at the end of 2011 in Africa South of the Sahara and then extended to the whole tropics. The focus of our work is climate planning. With this term, we mean all those plans to limit climate change (mitigation and sustainable action plans), to protect human settlements against its impacts (emergency, risk reduction, adaptation plans, and resilience strategies) and to pursue both the medium-term (municipal development plans) and long-term (comprehensive, general, and master plans) aims.

The chapters of this book are derived from the UArctic Congress 2016 science sessions, focusing on themes identified in the report of the International Conference on Arctic Research Planning (ICARP III) that was published in 2015. Themes address the changes and developments as well as the challenges and opportunities that are taking place in today’s global world. The Arctic is changing faster than any other region in the world. Its climate is changing in a speed that cannot be found anywhere else, affecting either directly or indirectly to almost everyone and everything. How can the Arctic societies and cultures, ecosystems, and environments cope with these fast changes? This book is divided into six thematic parts reflecting the congress themes: Vulnerability of the Arctic Environments, Vulnerability of the Arctic Societies, Building the Long-Term Human Capacity, Arctic Safety, and Arctic Tourism. The final part of the book “Circumpolar, Inclusive and Reciprocal Arctic” looks at the Arctic in the light of the UArctic’s mission and values; Gunhild Hoogensen Gjørv, professor of political sciences, addresses a number of issues surrounding the implementation of gender perspectives in the Arctic research, and Ulunnguaq Markussen, UArctic Student Ambassador, calls for an Arctic awakening of peoples in the era when Arctic is seen as a place for natural resource extraction and economic benefits.

This brochure highlights the central role the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (IOC) plays in the sustainable management of our oceans. Outside the ocean science community many people are unaware of the critical services the IOC provides from coordinating the global tsunami warning system, to supporting greater understanding of climate change, and sharing data on all marine life from bacteria to whales.

The Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment) through its Pacific sub-regional office are joining forces to provide support to Pacific delegates to the international UN Oceans Conference.

Fiji has been identified as one of the countries most vulnerable to declines in reef condition due to the high dependence on reef systems for key industries (tourism and fishing). Much of the waters of Fiji and adjacent international waters include highly prospective deposits of copper, gold, zinc, silver and chemical elements. Extracting these resources is only now becoming feasible due to technological advances in Deep Seabed Mining (DSM). A large area of Fiji’s waters is now subject to DSM exploration licenses. But very little is known of the risks DSM creates for key marine ecosystem services and the industries that reply on those services for both income and employment (e.g. tourism and fishing). This desktop study seeks to identify, scope and broadly estimate the potential costs to Fiji associated with DSM. Only once those costs are understood, can Fiji confidently make robust policy decision about the amount, location and management of DSM within its waters.

Until now, there has been only one source of data on global fishery catches: information reported to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations by member countries. An extensive, ten-year study conducted by The Sea Around Us Project of the University of British Columbia shows that this catch data is fundamentally misleading. Many countries underreport the amount of fish caught (some by as much as 500%), while others such as China significantly overreport their catches. The Global Atlas of Marine Fisheries is the first and only book to provide accurate, country-by-country fishery data. This groundbreaking information has been gathered from independent sources by the world’s foremost fisheries experts, and edited by Daniel Pauly and Dirk Zeller of the Sea Around Us Project. The Atlas includes one-page reports on 273 countries and their territories, plus fourteen topical global chapters. National reports describe the state of the country's fishery, by sector; the policies, politics, and social factors affecting it; and potential solutions. The global chapters address cross-cutting issues, from the economics of fisheries to the impacts of mariculture. Extensive maps and graphics offer attractive and accessible visual representations. While it has long been clear that the world’s oceans are in trouble, the lack of reliable data on fishery catches has obscured the scale, and nuances, of the crisis. The atlas shows that, globally, catches have declined rapidly since the 1980s, signaling an even more critical situation than previously understood. The Global Atlas of Marine Fisheries provides a comprehensive picture of our current predicament and steps that can be taken to ease it. For researchers, students, fishery managers, professionals in the fishing industry, and all others concerned with the status of the world’s fisheries, the Atlas will be an indispensable resource.

The Asia Pacific region is exceptionally rich in biodiversity. The tropical forests of South East Asia, the reefs of the ‘coral triangle’, the temperate forests and the large river basins found in the region are among the most unique on Earth. However, biodiversity in the Asia Pacific region is in fast decline. For example, the region recorded the world’s highest number of threatened species in 2014 and extensive coastal development and unsustainable exploitation of marine resources have resulted in the disappearance of over 40 percent of coral reefs and mangroves, leading to declines in fish stocks.