An appraisal of systematic conservation planning for Pacific Ocean Tropical Islands coastal environments

Systematic Conservation Planning (SCP) offers concepts and toolboxes to make spatial decisions on where to focus conservation actions while minimizing a variety of costs to stakeholders. Thirty-four studies of Pacific Ocean Tropical Islands were scrutinized to categorize past and current types of applications. It appeared that scenarios were often built on a biodiversity representation objective, opportunity costs for fishers was the most frequent cost factor, and an evolution from simple to sophisticated scenarios followed the need to maximize resilience and connectivity while mitigating climate change impacts. However, proxies and models were often not validated, pointing to data quality issues. Customary management by local communities motivated applications specific to the Pacific region, but several island features remained ignored, including invertebrate fishing, ciguatera poisoning and mariculture. Fourteen recommendations are provided to enhance scenarios? robustness, island specificities integration, complex modelling accuracy, and better use of SCP for island management.

Automated summary

SCP in Pacific Ocean Tropical Islands studies mainly focused on biodiversity representation objectives, with opportunity costs for fishers being the most frequent cost factor, and a transition from simple to complex scenarios to address climate change impacts. However, there are data quality issues and some island features are still being ignored.