Pacific Disaster Network

The Pacific Disaster Network is a website devoted to the monitoring of natural disasters within the region and the dissemination of publications, reports and conference proceedings relevant to regional humanitarian efforts.

Its stated aim is to be:

the largest and most comprehensive information resource for Disaster Risk Management for the Pacific Island Countries.
...
The portal will provide a valuable resource to all Disaster Risk Management partners working in the Pacific region including government agencies, regional bodies, non-government organisations and international agencies.

The website displays alerts of natural disasters, has a LOT of publications and reports of relevant to natural disasters, public health and agricultural issues. It is a fairly exhaustive site, but unfortunately one that is fairly unintuitive to use(for me at least..) at first glance. Exploring it further reveals more of its power and utility. The homepage leads with a satellite map from Google and a box giving the latest alerts, giving the promise that the location of these alerts will be visualised. Unfortunately this is not the case; a pity for people like me who like to be able to see where events are occuring on a map.

The website is a collaboration between the South Pacific Applied Geosciences Commission (SOPAC), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the International Red Cross and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Agriculture in the Pacific

Agriculture in developing countries is an area where a lot of international assistance and aid money goes. A lot of hard work, interesting information and useful resources are the fruits of these activities. Unfortunately though, this information can get easily lost in the morass of information that is the internet. The following is my humble attempt to promote a few of the sites I know that are relevant to Agriculture in the South Pacific, in addition to the ACIAR and SPC Forestry pamphlets I've talked about before.

Terracircle is an NGO that works primarily in Melanesia promoting sustainable agriculture through technical training, publications, consultancy and the provision of small grants for communities.

Working in close association with Terracircle is the Kastom Gaden Association (another website is under construction here) and the Planting Material Network, both based in the Solomon Islands. Both these organisations operate much more on the grass-roots level, connecting farmers within the Solomons to each other and encouraging communication at that level.

The Melanesian Farmer First Network is broader in scope than the two above, supporting farmers throughout PNG, the Solomons and Vanuatu. I liked the Innovations page on their site, though unfortunately it is only very infrequently updated.

OISAT (or the "Online Information Service for Non-Chemical Pest Management in the Tropics" in full) aims to detail control methods for tropical crops and pests. It seems to have more of a focus on Asia, but the information that is here will be of worth in most places with these crops and pests. It is currently fairly incomplete, with few of the insects in the Pest Management strategy having any information beyond a picture. However, there was a note saying the page had been updated in some form a day ago, so there is hope that this will change in the future.

Pacific Regional Red List

The Red List, a rather grim survey of the state of the world's biodiversity that highlights which species are particularly under threat of extinction, is one of the signature products of the IUCN. It is global in scope which gives it wide applicability, but sometimes details get lost in the mass of data. For example a search of "Pacific" in the list results in 160 entries, a number of which are not taxa from the the Pacific Islands, and those that are are primarily made up of the French Polynesian species Partula land snails.

This month however, IUCN have reviewed a number of species in preparation for a regional red list for the South Pacific, and have published a draft available at this website. It's a decent piece of work: 3769 species have been assessed, of which (to look at the bright side of things!) 1605 are considered to be of least concern. The worrying thing is that nearly the equivalent number (1060) are considered to be in threat of extinction, 177 of which are critically so.

There has been some discussion about the usefulness and validity of these documents, particularly for non-vertebrates. I see with some mirth that they confidently state the estimated number of described species to be 4911 (love the precision!), and I like the comment "Even experts contributing to global species assessments are often unable to provide an accurate estimate of the number of known species". Even experts eh...

Marshall Islands Biodiversity report

It would appear that the UN Development Program has looked at the biodiversity of Kiribati and the Marshall Islands. At least, they've got a report to that effect. After a lot of fluffing around when I stumbled across the appendices of the report, I finally managed to find the contents page with actual links:
http://www.undp.org/bpsp/nbsap_links/nbsap_Kiribati.htm

It's worth a look, particularly because it has the brilliant Marshallese phrase "Eruj in jebarbar" - Excited like a reef crab. Use that in your next conversation....

Another project of the UNDP has completed was the "South Pacific Biodiversity Conservation Programme" - its writeup is found here.