Marine Atlas: Maximizing Benefits for Kiribati

BEYOND THE HOTSPOTS: BIOREGIONS Ideally ecosystem-based marine planning should be based on comprehensive data that represents all of Kiribati’s marine plants and animals. This data, however is rarely available for any country. To overcome this limitation, surrogates can be used to classify the marine environment into spatial units, or bioregions, that host similar plants and animals.

The GOODS biogeographic classification from 2009 is an example of a global bioregionalization.

To address this, in 2006, Kiribati estab- lished the PIPA, one of the largest large- scale MPAs in the world, which consti- tutes around 11 per cent of Kiribati’s EEZ. Furthermore, the government of Kiribati is aiming to scale up national efforts towards creating community- and island-based MPAs throughout the country. While a lot of data are accessible—as the maps in this atlas show—comprehensive data are not available for any country, includ- ing Kiribati. To overcome this limitation, surro- gates must be used to classify the marine environment into spatial units, or bioregions, that can host similar plants and animals. These surrogates include factors such as

salinity (see also chapter “Go with the flow”), pH (see chapter “Turning sour”) or phosphate concentration (see chapter “The dose makes the poison”). Analysing and clustering such data results in spatial units, called marine “bioregions”. These bioregions present comprehensive descriptions of the marine biodiversity of Kiribati and can be used for conservation, management and planning. Such marine classification and the use of bi- oregions is not a new concept, as bioregions have been produced before at various scales in other countries, regions and globally. The graphic provides one example of a global bioregionalization, the Global Open Oceans and Deep Seabed (GOODS) biogeographic

classification, undertaken by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2009. Classifications such as GOODS are very useful on a global scale. However, Kiribati’s large EEZ is divided into merely three biore- gions, making the existing classifications of the marine environments, both coastal and offshore, too coarse to inform most national marine planning processes in Kiribati. This calls for more detailed bioregions to inform marine planning. The MACBIO project has thus developed draft marine bioregions across the South- West Pacific for use by Pacific Island

countries, including Kiribati, in their national planning processes for MSP and MPAs.

Kiribati joined many other countries in signing and ratifying the international Convention on Biological Diversity. In so doing, Kiribati has accepted international responsibilities and obligations, including Aichi Target 11: “By 2020, at least 17 per cent of terrestrial and inland water areas and 10 per cent of coastal and marine areas, especially areas of particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystem services, are conserved through effectively and equitably managed, ecolog- ically representative and well-connected systems of protected areas and other ef- fective area-based conservation measures, and integrated into the wider landscape and seascape.”

Using these bioregions as substitutes to describe the suite of marine biodiversity in Kiribati, an ecologically representative system of managed and protected areas can be built. This is done by representing an example of every bioregion within an area, as well as examples of all known habitats and ecosys- tems (see also chapters “Nature’s hotspots”). The bioregional approach assists planners with the fact that not all habitats and eco- systems are known and mapped.

MAXIMIZING BENEFITS FOR KIRIBATI

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