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Managing Invasive Species to Create a Great Green Line of Defense for the Pacific. Controlling invasive species is one of the most effective tool for restoring island resilience.

A speech by the Minister for Climate Change New Zealand, honorable James Shaw during COP 15 in 2022 declared his support on any and all efforts to scale up the management of Invasive species. This is critical as a key action for increasing the climate resilience of Pacific Islands.

PRISMSS is a coalition of organisations working together to tackle the issue of Invasive species in the Pacific, providing Pacific Island countries with access to best practice and expertise in managing invasive species. Five programmes of PRISMSS involve Protect Our Islands, Predator Free Pacific, War On Weeds, Natural Enemies Natural Solutions, and Resilient Ecosystems Resilient Communities which address all thematic areas of IS management.

At the COP 27 on 12 November 2022, the management of invasive species was discussed as a key action for increasing the resilience in the Pacific Island nations. Featuring David Eades, Climate change evokes passion, anger, but it also encourages human ingenuity problem solving. Invasive species management is one really good example of that because it makes Pacific Island states that much more resilient to climate change. Invasive species don't allow systems to be in good health if you look around the Pacific there's a lot of impacts from invasive species that don't allow our ecosystems and Islands to function the way that they usually would have I would I would encourage the other small island states in the Pacific and throughout the world to consider because these are the stresses that we have to remove from the equation to be able to combat the climate change when we link it to the climate change and disaster

In this video, Steve Menzies of Flinch Marketing introduces the invasive species Mainstreaming Strategies and invited feedbacks from the audience through the use of Mentimeter.

The Cook Islands comprises 15 islands with a total land area of 237 sq km and a maximum height above sea-level of 652 m. The islands are scattered over an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of 1.8 million sq km; one of the largest EEZ’s in the South Pacific.

This proposal has been prepared by the Ocean and Islands Programme (OIP) within the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) in collaboration with the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA). It has been prepared in response to an invitation1 from the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) to assist the Cook Islands in deriving coastal related information to underpin and inform climate change adaptation decisions for coastal areas of Mangaia Island.

Flooding imposes significant costs on households and businesses located in the lower Vaisigano catchment area. SOPAC, under the European Development Fund (EDF) project Reducing Vulnerability of Pacific ACP States, has worked with the Government of Samoa to develop the Samoa Flood Management and Action Plan, which identifies actions for government agencies, the private sector, NGOs and communities responsible for flood and floodplain management that can assist in reducing flood risks in Samoa, particularly in the lower Vaisigano catchment area located in Apia, which is subject to frequent flooding.

The Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) is currently executing the project Reducing Vulnerability in Pacific ACP States with funding from the European Development Fund (EDF). The project has the objective to reduce Pacific ACP States' vulnerability to natural disasters affecting their coasts through the development of an integrated planning and management system which targets: hazard mitigation and risk assessment; alternative sources of aggregates for construction; and water resources and sanitation. Major activities undertaken through this project with participating countries are: -assessment of aggregate resource supplies to mitigate the impact of unsustainable aggregate mining from the coastline; -development of bathymetric maps, 3D bathymetric and hydrodynamic models spatial databases relating to resource use, exploration and survey, and vulnerability to disasters; and -investigating and raising awareness about coastal processes.