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This is the first Roundtable meeting since the 2007 8th Pacific Islands Conference on Nature Conservation, held in Alotau, Papua New Guinea. All previous working groups and activities of the Roundtable were disbanded and a new set of activities proposed to the Heads of Roundtable Organisations meeting for discussion. The Heads of Roundtable Organisations meeting consisted of people with decision making ability for their organizations or with designated decision making ability. The Roundtable meeting on the second two days was for other Roundtable organization participants and developed and confirmed charters for working groups and discussed other issues pertinent to conservation in the region.

The waters surrounding Choiseul contain some of the highest diversities of coral and reef fish in the world, with the 2004 Solomon Island Marine Assessment showing that the Solomon Islands are part of the global centre for marine diversity known as the Coral Triangle. Other countries that make up the Coral Triangle are Indonesia, Philippines, parts of Malaysia, East Timor and Papua New Guinea. Since 2004 The Nature Conservancy (TNC), the Lauru Land Conference of Tribal Community (LLCTC) and Choiseul provincial fisheries have assisted five local communities around Choiseul in their efforts to establish Marine Conservation Areas (MCA) on their traditional reefs. The first MCA to be established was the Zinoa MCA. Zinoa is located on the south-west side of Choiseul in the Solomon Islands. The Zinoa MCA was established by traditional leaders in November 2004, covering 150 hectares and consisting of two islands and associated reefs that occur approximately one kilometre offshore from Voza village on the Choiseul mainland. The reefs around Zinoa Islands are representative of this region of the South coast of Choiseul. In early 2005 sea cucumbers, trochus and giant clams around Zinoa Islands were reported by traditional reef owners to be only a tiny fraction of their former abundance and food fish populations were also reported to be in decline.

The Question of how much Conservation is enough is one that is almost impossible to answer. There must first be some agreement on basic principles or goals, such as the desirability of preserving the diversity of life on this planet, but even then the specific application of these principles to local situations can raise many complex issues (is feeding hungry children more important than saving an endangered land snail?) Adequacy of protected area coverage may seem very different viewed from a world scientific perspective or from that of a local decision-maker who seeks to balance many different demands. Ultimately decisions on adequacy must be made by each country, although hopefully the needs of the world community will be taken into account. This paper looks at the principles by which adequacy of protected area coverage must be judged, evaluates the present status of conservation action in Oceania, and then develops some goals for protected area development in the region.

Some presentations refer to the term Marine Managed Area (MMA) instead of Marine Protected Area (MPA) in order to cover more management options. The workshop proposed and adopted a rough typology of MM As that will be useful to communicate with the key decision makers (land use planners, coastal zone planners and managers, regional planners, protected area planners and managers, community leaders, sectorial planners in fisheries and environment...)

The SPBCP is now two years away from the end of its funding support to Conservation Area Projects it is supporting in 12 different Pacific Island Countries. By the end of the year 2001, all CAP will have ceased receiving funds and would be very much self-dependent unless arrangements with some other donors are made.

The Action Strategy for Nature Conservation in the Pacific Islands Region for 2003-2007, arose out of the 7th Pacific Islands Conference on Nature Conservation and Protected Areas which was held in Rarotonga, Cook Islands, in July 2002. It was then endorsed by the member country representatives of the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) at the September 2003 SPREP Meeting and it was meant to represent a consensus on the priority concerns for conservation and ways in which these can be addressed.

The U.S. Pacific Remote Island Areas (PRIAs) are nine sovereign Federal territories that straddle the equator in the central Pacific. All are single reef ecosystems that are a part of a large central Pacific biogeographic and geological province consisting mostly of ancient low reef islands and atolls (Figure 12.1; Stoddart, 1992). Six of the PRIAs are atolls or atoll reefs: Johnston Atoll (16?N, 169?W), Palmyra Atoll (5?53?N, 162?05?W), Kingman Reef (6?25?N, 162?23?W), which constitute the three northernmost of the U.S. Line Islands; Rose Atoll (14?S, 168?W), the easternmost of the Samoan Islands; Wake Atoll (20?N, 155?W), the northernmost of the Marshall Islands; and Midway Atoll (28?N, 177?W), near the northwestern end of the Hawaiian Archipelago. The remaining three PRIAs are low reef islands within one degree latitude of the equator: Jarvis Island (00?S, 160?W), in the central U.S. Line Islands, Howland Island (00?18?S, 160?01’W); and Baker Island (00?13?N, 176?38?W), the two northernmost of the U.S. Phoenix Islands. All except Wake and Johnston are National Wildlife Refuges (NWRs) administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and all fall under cojurisdiction of the U.S. Department of Interior (DOI) and the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC), except Johnston, which is managed by the U.S. Department of Defense, and Palmyra, which is under the joint jurisdiction of DOI, DOC, and The Nature Conservancy