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Closing session including: Presentation and endorsement of the Vemoore Declaration, including statements Closing words by conference organisers (PIRT, SPREP and New C

Simplifying coral reef ecosystems to a single number for a country, or for a region, runs counter to our knowledge of the complexity and variability that characterise healthy reefs in a healthy ocean scape. The Pacific island region has very diverse corals and many types of reefs. Due to differences in the coral shapes and associated community of species, it is not possible to identify a single value as a health threshold for live coral cover. Instead, we can look for changes in live coral cover at a given reef, along with changes in species abundance and other factors that characterise a coral reef system.

Enterococci are used as an indicator for the microbiological quality of marine waters from the standpoint of human health. The same bacterial group is also commonly used as an indicator for safe consumption of shellfish. The safety thresholds differ by the type of use, such as swimming or consumption of seafood from the marine area.

Fishing is a complex topic with many species and ecosystem components as well as social, cultural, political, and economic components. Here, we focus on the defined indicator regarding tuna, considering the biomass of these pelagic fish as well as the ecosystems that support these fish. For information about coastal and nearshore fisheries, please see Regional Indicator: Coastal fish biomass.

This action track session will provide a brief snapshot of the current state of knowledge on terrestrial protected areas based on recent analyses conducted for the Oceania region, It will examine how community development needs and livelihoods shape the success of protected areas, it will look at protected area management effectiveness and tools for assessing effectiveness. The session will also highlight sustainable financing efforts focusing on specific country examples, highlight community management and compliance focusing on specific country examples and provide an overview of the protected area information platforms for assisting decision making and planning in the region

Fisheries in the Pacific countries and territories are essential to livelihoods, food security and island economies. These fisheries are increasingly impacted by overfishing, climate change and habitat degradation and other threats like the recent Covid-19 pandemic. This session will approach the common challenges that are facing Pacific countries and territories is fisheries and showcase how New Caledonia, as host of the conference, has dealt with them: IUU fishing threats to large EZZ unintentional bycatch of non-target species management, Covid-19's impact on fisheries and climate change's threat to Pacific fisheries distribution.

This session will explore three levels of governance: regional, national and interinstitutional. Through concrete examples at each level, the speakers will describe how governance is organized today in the region at different scales, how enforcement is ensured, and what issues are encountered at every level. Ideally, the outcomes of the session should constitute a good base to build guidelines useful to improve the efficiency to stakeholders in charge of nature conservation and protected areas.

The session will take participants on a journey to explore nature-based solutions, starting with global best practice standards, to learning about field examples from mangrove ecosystems in the Pacific region and then how NBS contributes to multiple policy objectives across climate, nature and development agendas. We will discuss some of the risks and challenges associated with scaling up NBS, and provide recommendations to support in the region.

In this session attendees will learn about and explore the incredible diversity marine megafauna in our blue Pacific from the giants such as the humpback whale to the smallest seabirds the storm petrels. Our sessions will reveal some of the secrets of these long distance mariners - the marine turtles, seabirds, whales and dolphins and the one remaining highly threatened Sirenian the dugong. This session links directly to the State of Conservation Report indicators for the Red List (22) and Migratory species (23)

Monitoring and Informed Decision Making In the context of the pacific Region, this session will explore: 1. The role of targets and indicators in farming information gathered for decision-making regarding how nature is used and protected; 2. Issues around information availability and quality; 3. The range of data platforms and tools for aggregating, housing and making sense of scientific data and traditional knowledge; 4. How decisions are actually made that impact Pacific biodiversity and ecosystems and what sorts of information, if any, are decision-makers using.