Saving Seafood

Now that the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Hawaii has taken place, what happens next?

October 6th, 2016 — “If all we do is host people from around the world and have a really great conference, then we have missed the opportunity.” So said Charles “Chipper” Wichman, addressing attendees of the Hawaii Conservation Conference at UH-Hilo in August of 2015.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), founded in 1948, has a mission to, “Influence, encourage and assist societies throughout the world to conserve the integrity and diversity of nature and to ensure that any use of natural resources is equitable and ecologically sustainable.” Every four years they convene members, delegates and guests to the World Conservation Congress (WCC), most recently held in Jeju, Korea (2012) and Barcelona, Spain (2008). Never before had the United States been a venue for the Congress.

Wichman, National Tropical Botanical Garden President and CEO, curator of the 989-acre Limahuli Preserve on Kauai, not only served on the Host and Program Committees of the WCC, but was largely responsible for the idea of holding the event in Hawaii, where threats to unique eco-systems and biodiversity are on center stage.  Back in 2008, after attending the Barcelona WCC, Maui kalo farmer and educator Penny Levin suggested that the only way to get suitable attention and funding for local conservation needs would be to bring an event of this stature to Hawaii. Dr. Christopher Dunn, then-director of Lyon Arboretum, and Wichman agreed, and began an eight-year odyssey of making the dream a reality.

By all accounts, the 2016 IUCN-WCC, held Sept. 1-10 at Honolulu’s Hawaii Convention Center, was an unprecedented success. More that 10,000 people attended, from more than 190 nations. The extravaganza showcased Hawaii, Pacific and global eco-issues and challenges with dozens of displays, presentations, forums and discussions over the first five days. Then the Congress shifted gears, with five days of deliberations and voting on 85 proposals, from closing domestic markets for elephant ivory trade to securing our future by developing a post-2020 strategy.

A Who’s Who list of conservation luminaries and leaders highlighted the event–Jane Goodall, Sylvia Earle, Jean Michel Cousteau, E.O. Wilson and more—with President Barack Obama a late no-show after a brief welcome to the Pacific Island Conference of Leaders in a small, private event at the UH East-West Center on Manoa on the eve of the WCC. Expected to address the general assembly at an opening reception at Neal Blaisdell Center the next morning, Obama instead flew to Midway, in the center of the Paphanaumokuakea Marine National Monument (PMNM) that he expanded just a week earlier by presidential order, making it the world’s largest marine protected area.

Read the full story at Mauitime

International Union for the Conservation of Nature World Conservation Congress wraps up, sets direction for sustainability agenda

September 13, 2016 — The IUCN World Conservation Congress wrapped up on Saturday, setting the global conservation agenda for the next four years and defining a roadmap for the implementation of the historic agreements adopted in 2015.

The IUCN Congress closed with the presentation of the Hawaii Commitments.

This document titled “Navigating Island Earth” was shaped by debates and deliberations over the last ten days, and opened for comment to some 10,000 participants from 192 countries.

It outlines opportunities to address some of the greatest challenges facing nature conservation and calls for a commitment to implement them.

“Some of the world’s greatest minds and most dedicated professionals met here at the IUCN Congress to decide on the most urgent action needed to ensure the long-term survival of life on Earth and our planet’s ability to sustain us,” says Inger Andersen, IUCN Director General. “This IUCN Congress has come at a pivotal time in our planet’s history as we find ourselves at a crossroad, facing challenges of unprecedented magnitude.”

Read the full story at KITV

Ocean Warming Is Already Affecting Arctic Fish And Birds

September 13, 2016 — Up until a few years ago, mackerel were unknown in Greenland’s cold waters. The small oily fish typically spawned west of the British Isles and then migrated toward the northeast along the Norwegian current to feed for the summer. But in 2007, they began to show up in large numbers in the Irminger Current around Iceland. On the ocean highway, where they once turned right, they now turned left.

By 2011, the mackerel had found their way into Greenlandic waters, prompting the launch of a new fishery. Three years later, the mackerel fishery made up 23 percent of Greenland’s export earning, an “extreme example of how climate change can impact the economy of an entire nation,” Teunis Jansen, a researcher at the Technical University of Denmark, said in a release.

The mackerel aren’t the only species being affected by warmer oceans. Soaring temperatures have pushed entire groups of species toward the poles, caused increases in disease in plants and animals and changed weather patterns, according to a report launched this week by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Marine species are moving northward at a rate roughly five times faster than the migration of land animals.

The report, released during the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Hawaii, highlights the impacts of ocean warming on marine life, from microorganisms to mammals. Eighty scientists from a dozen countries worked on the report, considered to be the most comprehensive collection of research on the planet’s warming oceans.

Truly Staggering

“We were astounded by the scale and extent of ocean warming effects on entire ecosystems made clear by this report,” said Dan Laffoley, an IUCN marine adviser and one of the report’s lead authors.

The world’s oceans have acted as a buffer against climate change. A “staggering 93 percent” of the heat produced by human activities has been absorbed by the world’s oceans, Laffoley said. If the heat had entered the atmosphere instead of the oceans, the Earth would have warmed not by the 1C (1.8F) we have already experienced, but by 36C (64.8F). “Up to now, the ocean has shielded us from the worst impacts of climate change,” the report’s authors write.

Read the full story at the Huffington Post

Obama In Honolulu: ‘No Nation Is Immune To A Changing Climate’

September 1, 2016 — Climate change and cooperation emerged as key themes Wednesday when President Barack Obama addressed Pacific Island government leaders and others at the East-West Center in Honolulu.

“No nation, not even one as powerful as the United States, is immune to a changing climate,” he said, adding that “there’s no conflict between a healthy economy and a healthy planet.”

“While some members of the U.S. Congress still seem to be debating whether climate change is real or not, you are planning for new places for your people to live,” Obama said. “Crops are withering in the Marshall Islands. Kiribati bought land in another country because theirs may someday be submerged. High seas forced villagers from their homes in Fiji.”

The private speech before the Pacific Islands Conference of Leaders, a group of 20 government officials chaired by Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Peter O’Neill, came on the eve of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s 10-day event in Honolulu.

More than 9,000 people from 190 countries are coming to what’s been dubbed the “Olympics of Conservation.” It’s the first time that the IUCN’s World Conservation Congress, created in 1948, will meet in the United States — something Obama highlighted in his speech.

Environmental advocates had wanted Obama to speak at the opening ceremony Thursday morning at Blaisdell Center, hoping that’s where he would announce the fourfold expansion of Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

Instead, the president signed the proclamation for the expansion last week.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

Hawaii set to host world’s largest conservation meeting

August 31, 2016 — Some 8,000 heads of state, policymakers and environmentalists convene in Hawaii this week for the world’s largest gathering aimed at forging a path forward on the planet’s toughest conservation problems.

US President Barack Obama is expected to be among the world leaders in Honolulu as the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) opens its World Conservation Congress, held every four years in a different location around the globe.

This year, the conference theme of “Planet at the Crossroads” is aimed at exposing the plight of island nations that are at risk of disappearing in the coming decades due to rising seas.

It is the first major environmental meeting of global leaders since the Paris climate talks last year.

Read the full story at Phys.org