Climate vulnerability as a lens for focusing large-scale conservation planning in the Pacific Islands - 1

Climate change and variability pose unprecedented threats to the rich and unique biocultural heritage of the Pacific Islands. Assessing the imminence and scale of these threats raises many challenges in a region with a wealth of at-risk biological and cultural resources and a corresponding paucity of data sets. The Pacific Islands Climate Change Cooperative (PICCC) is working with federal, state, indigenous, and NGO partners on developing and implementing alternative adaptation strategies to conserve priority biological and cultural resources at large scales (e.g., archipelagic). This presentation will briefly describe the PICCC’s overarching Adaptation Initiative framework and then focus on the specific example of an effort that has resulted in the development of groundbreaking climate change vulnerability assessment methodologies to project the vulnerability of plant and forest bird species across the Main Hawaiian Islands. The presentation also will cover how the PICCC is working with management partners in applying these tools to large-scale conservation design in Hawaiʻi as well as lessons learned for ensuring the maximum utility of these and other climate change tools and assessments for the natural and cultural resources management community.