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The countries and territories of the Pacific Islands face many challenges in building the three main pillars of food security: availability, access and appropriate use of nutritious food. These challenges arise from factors including rapid population growth and urbanization, shortages of arable land for farming and the availability of cheap, low-quality foods. As a result, many are now highly dependent on imported food, and the incidence of non-communicable diseases in the region is among the highest in the world. This report summarizes: 1) the projected effects of climate change on agriculture, fisheries and aquaculture in the Pacific region; 2) adaptations and supporting policies needed to reduce risks to food production; 3) gaps in knowledge that must be filled in order to implement the adaptations effectively; 4) recommendations to fill these knowledge gaps.

International audience; • Only a few studies assess the impacts of local REDD+ initiatives on forests, due to the financial, methodological, data and political challenges of implementing rigorous impact evaluations.• Local REDD+ projects and programmes frequently include a mix of interventions, i.e., incentives, disincentives and enabling measures. Disincentives are used to reduce deforestation, and incentives – either conditional on results or not – are used to help minimise the trade-offs between carbon and well-being outcomes. • The scarce evidence that is available on local REDD+ outcomes shows modestly encouraging results for forest conservation and carbon stock enhancement. Three projects using conditional incentives showed positive results for forests, through reducing the negative impacts of smallholder agriculture and firewood collection.

Biodiversity continues to decline in the face of increasing anthropogenic pressures such as habitat destruction, exploitation, pollution and introduction of alien species. Existing global databases of species' threat status or population time series are dominated by charismatic species. The collation of datasets with broad taxonomic and biogeographic extents, and that support computation of a range of biodiversity indicators, is necessary to enable better understanding of historical declines and to project - and avert - future declines. We describe and assess a new database of more than 1.6 million samples from 78 countries representing over 28,000 species, collated from existing spatial comparisons of local-scale biodiversity exposed to different intensities and types of anthropogenic pressures, from terrestrial sites around the world. The database contains measurements taken in 208 (of 814) ecoregions, 13 (of 14) biomes, 25 (of 35) biodiversity hotspots and 16 (of 17) megadiverse countries. The database contains more than 1% of the total number of all species described, and more than 1% of the described species within many taxonomic groups - including flowering plants, gymnosperms, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, beetles, lepidopterans and hymenopterans. The dataset, which is still being added to, is therefore already considerably larger and more representative than those used by previous quantitative models of biodiversity trends and responses. The database is being assembled as part of the PREDICTS project (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems - http://www.predicts.org.uk). We make site-level summary data available alongside this article. The full database will be publicly available in 2015.

Available literature is reviewed to determine the type of forest management best suited to slowing the rate of loss of the world's forests and biodiversity. The traditional argument that sustainable forestry is the most preferred option has recently come under criticism from those who argue that it is neither profitable nor necessarily environmentally preferable to conventional logging. The paper proceeds from comparing financial rates of return to differing forest management systems, through to economic rates of return, and from there to wider rate of return concepts that include non-market values, eg. biodiversity conservation and carbon storage. While sustainable systems appear capable of earning returns in excess of some modest discount rates, eg. 5-10 percent, they do not compete financially with other systems. No other factors appear to give sustainable timber management any edge over conventional systems. If the focus is on sustainable and unsustainable forest systems in developing countries, then high discount rates reinforce the initial preference for conventional systems based on the rapid liquidation of the timber and other resources without regard for future harvests or other impacts. Studies suggest non-market benefits of sustainable systems are significant. Timber yields are less on a comparative basis but non-timber values more than offset the relatively lower yield. The role of carbon is highlighted because carbon values dominate the non-market values overall. An analysis made in the context of a modified forest model, developed by Hyde, suggests the prospect for sustainable forest management is low in the early stages of development, and increases as the values attached to the forest and the services rise over time. Extended to include carbon and biodiversity values, it is arguable that the potential for sustainable forestry is far greater, even in the early stages of development, than might be thought.

Stopping illegal timber harvesting and adopting reduced-impact logging in the tropics, together with wildfire suppression, could cost-effectively reduce carbon emissions and enhance carbon uptake. Carbon uptake in degraded forests could be enhanced by better postlogging forest management practices and active restoration. REDD+ goals related to forest degradation are more achievable than ever due in part to recent improvements in remote sensing techniques for monitoring logging and wildfires coupled with increasing availability of hand-held global positioning systems, especially if the synergy with ongoing forest certification is fully utilised.

© 2019 Anna Jeanne Power Sanders ; While there has been considerable progress in developing global environmental policies and goals, implementing these at a local level has proven extremely challenging. This study explores how internationally formulated objectives for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) are implemented in frontier landscapes undergoing rapid transition. I focus on subnational implementation of REDD+ in relation to land use decision-making in Indonesia. International donors and agencies have actively promoted REDD+ to reduce carbon emissions, improve forest management and broaden livelihood options in developing countries. Indonesia has been a priority country for REDD+ due to high rates of deforestation and continuing land use change. In this thesis, I use multi-level governance (MLG) concepts to investigate how internationally formulated objectives for REDD+ interact with existing systems of land use governance at multiple levels. I incorporate actor-network theory (ANT) within an overall practice orientation to address the following questions: (i) how are land use decisions made, (ii) how is REDD+ being implemented within interacting multi-level governance arrangements, and (iii) how do decision-making processes in these arrangements relate to multiple outcomes? These questions are underscored by a concern with social and environmental justice, and related to this, a concern with ethics in global environmental governance and novel mechanisms such as REDD+. In 2010, Central Kalimantan was selected as the official REDD+ priority province of Indonesia. The province has had a long and complicated history of governance interventions and is currently undergoing rapid land use changes, such as the establishment of large industrial oil palm plantations. I used a case study approach, centring on the southern tropical peatlands of Central Kalimantan, where a variety of REDD+ projects have been implemented. Data was collected during 10 months of field research conducted ...

The following points may be useful as the beginnings of a checklist: 1. What is the purpose of assessing sustainability of forest management (e.g. operations, planning, policy, international agreements)? 2. What scale is relevant (e.g. compartment, forest, watershed, nation, global)? 3. What actors are involved (e.g. communities, government, corporations)? 4. What are relevant sustainability goals to be discussed among actors (consider economics e.g. yields, revenue; ecology e.g. biodiversity, water quality; social aspects e.g. tenure) 5. Assess sustainability goals and highlight information requirements in the light of system behaviour and use, with special consideration of the likely timing and location of potential problems (e.g. anticipated or unpredictable, minor or catastrophic, single event or continuing trend, localized or widespread), and the anticipated nature of observable problems. 6. Define indicators of sustainability and consider suitable measurement scales (e.g. present/absent, qualitative, quantitative). 7. Define when, where and how to measure these indicators, giving special attention to the sampling scheme (e.g. purposive, systematic, stratified random). 8. Select and apply a suitable assessment methodology (e.g. permanent sample plots, environmental impact assessment, forest resource accounting, cost-benefit analysis). 9. Reconsider and, if necessary, revise the entire procedure from step 1 in the light of interim results of the assessment.