Pacific RISCC Videos Featured at the 2021 IUCN World Conservation Congress

Pacific RISCC Featured at the 2021 IUCN World Conservation Congress

September 6, 2021

Pacific RISCC was honored to present some of their perspectives through video at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) hosted the World Conservation Congress (WCC) in Marseille, France on September 6, 2021. Held every four years, the WCC is the world’s largest conservation event and environmental decision-making forum, and was previously held in 2016 in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi.

Pacific RISCC core hui member and the Pacific RISA co-lead investigator Laura Brewington joined a large Delegation from Hawaiʻi that was led by the Hawaiʻi Conservation Alliance Foundation, the KUA movement, and the University of Hawaiʻi Environmental Law Program’s Our Drowning Voices team. The Hawaiʻi State Department of Land and Natural Resources Chair, Suzanne Case, served as head of the Delegation, and dozens of events and presentations were held at the Hawaiʻi-Oceania Pavilion during the first six days of the Forum.

During the session on climate change and invasive species, Brewington and collaborators from the Pacific Regional Invasive Species and Climate Change (RISCC) management network shared voices from around the region, describing the challenges and opportunities for research on these synergistic threats. You can check out all of the video submissions below from our Pacific RISCC core team.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service offered an introduction to disease that threatens the very survival of Hawaiʻi’s native forest birds, as temperatures rise and invasive mosquitoes reach higher grounds. Focusing in on Hawaiʻi Island, the Pacific Islands Climate Adaptation Science Center (PICASC) shared a manager’s perspective from the Puʻuwaʻaʻwaʻa Forest Reserve, where the challenges of managing under drought and wildfire are magnified by pressure from ungulates and other disturbances. From Guam to American Sāmoa and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Pacific RISCC partners emphasized that dealing with the dual impacts of climate change and invasive species in islands is not a “one size fits all” approach, and requires greater collaboration and research to protect Pacific Island natural heritage into the future.

This news story was adapted from the Pacific RISA article “The IUCN World Conservation Congress: Resilience is in our nature”

Watch all 6 of our short videos below

The Pacific RISA and partners share a panel on building resilience in Guam, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands

The US Fish and Wildlife Service shares the agency’s mission and describe the twin threats of climate change and invasive species facing native Hawaiian forest birds

The Pacific Islands Climate Adaptation Science Center and the Hawaiʻi Division of Forestry and Wildlife discuss the challenges facing Hawaiʻi’s rangeland managers under changing drought and wildfire conditions

The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands Division of Fish and Wildlife shares how accelerated habitat loss, combined with the introduction of invasive species, is threatening endemic birds and other native plants and animals found only on these small islands of Micronesia

The American Sāmoa Visitors Bureau describes how climate change is bringing heavy rains, erosion, and damage, from the island’s coral reefs to farmland and mountaintops, but policies to reduce human impacts in those areas are only as strong as the and agencies who people enforce them

The Guam Department of Agriculture shares how the small island of Guam in Micronesia is deeply connected to the Asia-Pacific region through international trade and shipping, while being buffeted by the impacts of a changing climate

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