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The population in the South Pacific is projected to double in the next 30 years. The success of these community based management approaches comes at a time when the region faces enormous challenges to food security, biodiversity and adaptation to climate change. Evidence for significant fishery impacts such as increased landings or catch per unit effort is scarcer, possibly reflecting a greater time period required for such impacts to be observable. There is also now an increasing body of technical literature which seems to confirm these observations and indeed the potential speed at which this may occur, and these increases seem likely to reflect positive impacts on the biodiversity within these areas. Not least, communities anecdotally report rapid and appreciable increases of marine resources within closed areas. The benefits of LMMAs and community-based resource management are many. The extent of this shift towards Community Based Resource Management in Melanesia and Polynesia is unprecedented on a global scale and is the subject of this report. In the South Pacific, conservation and sustainable use are often seen as inseparable as part of the surviving concepts of traditional environmental stewardship.
#TOAU APPRAISAL DRIVER#
The main driver in most cases, is a community desire to maintain or improve livelihoods, often related to perceived threats to food security or local economic revenue. The approaches being developed at national levels are built on a unique feature of the region, customary tenure and resource access, and make use of, in most cases, existing community strengths in traditional knowledge and governance, combined with a local awareness of the need for action, resulting in what have been most aptly termed Locally Managed Marine Areas (LMMAs). These protected areas, implemented by over 500 communities spanning 15 independent countries and territories represent a unique global achievement.
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The South Pacific has experienced a remarkable proliferation of Marine Managed Areas in the last decade.