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The pandemic further widened existing inequalities and vulnerabilities. Evidence also shows the reversal of hard-won gains in poverty reduction in several countries in the region. All this is happening alongside intensifying environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, and te continued onslaught of natural hazards and climate change.

On 11 November 2014, a remarkable event occurred. President Barack Obama of the United States and President Xi Jinping of China announced a bilateral agreement to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) that cause global warming by their respective nations. On 12 December 2015, a year and a month later, representatives of 195 countries attending the 21st Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting in Paris, France, announced the Paris Climate Agreement. The goal of the Paris Climate Agreement is to limit the future emission of GHGs such that the rise in global mean surface temperature will be no more than 1.5 °C (target) or 2.0 °C (upper limit) above the pre-industrial level. The Paris Climate Agreement utilizes an approach for reducing the emissions of GHGs that is distinctly different than earlier efforts. The approach for Paris consists of a series of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), submitted by the world’s nations, reflecting either a firm commitment (unconditional INDCs) or a plan contingent on financial and/or technological support (conditional INDCs). The Obama–Xi announcement was instrumental in the framing of the Paris Climate Agreement. The INDCs submitted by the USA and China were built closely upon the November 2014 bilateral announcement. China and the USA rank number one and two, respectively, in terms of national emission of GHGs. Practically speaking, unified global action to combat global warming required these two nations to get on the same page.

Protected natural areas deserve the combination of nature uniqueness and conservation willing. The foundation stone for National Parks is the awareness of that unique character—actual or presumed, most times based on non-tangible properties or singularities —grown in some social sectors, followed by the aim of preserving particular biota, singular ecosystems or entire landscapes. This was the case for the Aigüestortes i Estany de Sant Maurici National Park. Like other protected areas in alpine mountains, its apparent wilderness was a key factor in declaring it National Park, in 1955. The rough relief carved in the Maladeta granodiorite batholith, including rocky crests and summits, steep slopes and glacial valley bottoms, had for long grabbed attention. The abundance of alpine lakes and other water-related systems must have been particularly attractive, in comparison with other Iberian mountains, and even with other Pyrenean areas.

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.

Despite a growing body of literature on integrated land–sea management (ILSM), very little critical assessment has been conducted in order to evaluate ILSM in practice on island systems. Here we develop indicators for assessing 10 integrated island management principles and evaluate the performance of planning and implementation in four island ILSM projects from the tropical Pacific across different governance structures. We find that where customary governance is still strongly respected and enabled through national legislation, ILSM in practice can be very effective at restricting access and use according to fluctuations in resource availability. However, decision-making under customary governance systems may be vulnerable to mismanagement. Governmentled ILSM processes have the potential to design management actions that address the spatial scale of ecosystem processes and threats within the context of national policy and legislation, but may not fully capture broad stakeholder interests, and implementation may be poorly coordinated across highly dispersed island archipelagos. Private sector partnerships offer unique opportunities for resourcing island ILSM, although these are highly likely to be geared towards private sector interests that may change in the future and no longer align with community and/or national objectives. We identify consistent challenges that arise during island ILSM planning and implementation and offer recommendations for improvement.

This book is about governance for drought resilience. But that simple sentence alone might rouse several questions. Because what do we mean with drought, and how does that relate to water scarcity? And what do we mean with resilience, and why is resilience needed for tackling drought? And how does governance enter this equation? We argue that governance assessment—the study of restricting and facilitating characteristics of a governance setting—can greatly aid implementation of drought adaptation measures, thereby increasing drought resilience. In this chapter we will first discuss the occurrence of drought in (Northwest) Europe, and why governance matters for increasing drought resilience (Sect. 1.1). Second, we will shed more light on the notion of governance and how governance is dealt with by us (Sect. 1.2). Third, we will review existing governance assessment methods (Sect. 1.3). Fourth, we will use this knowledge on governance and governance assessment to introduce our key principles in governance assessment, and discuss how we have applied these in a real-life project setting (Sect. 1.4). Fifth, and last, this chapter ends with an outlook into the rest of the book, to guide the reader in reading (Sect. 1.5).