Samoa 2012 Environmental Outlook: developing a vision for the next 50 years
This document is the initial stage of assessment for Samoa's State of the Environment. Samoa's rich cultural heritage and future prosperity depend on a healthy environment. Over the past 50 years, Samoa's environment has been pressured by increasing population and development, agricultural expansion, invasive species of plants and animals, and disasters such as tsunamis, cyclones, and fires. A workshop was held to develop an assessment framework and assign expert assessments for six key habitats: Cloud Forest (very good) and Upland Forest (fair), Lowlands (poor), Coastal Strand (poor), Nearshore Marine (fair) and Offshore Marine (fair), and Rivers and Streams (good to poor); as well as other key resource areas such as climate change, air quality, waste disposal, renewable energy, and population pressures.
Science communication courses in Cambridge and Samoa
During May, IAN held science communication courses with participants from a wide variety of organizations, countries, and cultures. The course on the Horn Point campus in Cambridge, MD had students from Maryland Department of Natural Resources, US Environmental Protection Agency, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Conservation International, Sinclair Knight Merz (Australia), and graduate students and professors from a variety of local and regional universities. In Samoa, we taught courses for the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment. Students in these courses were from Samoa, Fiji, Australia, New Zealand, and Great Britain.
9th Pacific Islands Conference on Nature Conservation and Protected Areas
IAN staff attended the 9th Pacific Islands Conference on Nature Conservation and Protected Areas in Fiji in early December, setting up our first IAN conference booth. Our booth proved extremely popular, with almost all of our materials ravaged by the end of the first day! The conference itself was a fantastic opportunity to meet Pacific-based colleagues that we've worked with virtually, and to catch up with others. IAN diagrams and reports were featured in several keynote presentations and workshops throughout the conference, and we've started lining up potential new collaborations for the next few years. The word is getting out!