Project Overview
This project will enhance Niue’s capacity to effectively create and manage protected areas for biodiversity conservation, sustainable use of natural resources, and safeguarding of ecosystem services. It focuses on the expansion of its protected estate on land and on its marine areas through a combination of community conservation areas and government-led protected areas. In Community Conservation Areas, both strict protection and sustainable use zones will be identified and planned carefully, using innovative protection tools recognizing that tenure over most land areas is vested in local communities. This project has been designed to engineer a paradigm shift in the management of terrestrial, coastal and marine protected sites from a site-centric approach to a holistic “ridge to reef” comprehensive approach. Through this approach, activities in the immediate production landscapes adjacent to marine and terrestrial protected areas will be managed to reduce threats to biodiversity and ecosystem services stemming from key production activities (e.g. tourism and agriculture). Additionally, the project also introduces the concept of connectivity between landscape and seascape in Niue.
Terrestrial protected areas will include a landscape that links strictly protected community areas (tapu) to each other to enhance their integrity and to form a functional ecological corridor between them. Similarly, the creation of a Marine Protected Area at Beveridge Reef also satisfies the integrated and holistic approach promoted by the project by recognizing the link that is thought to exist between the Reef and mainland Niue through which the former serves as a source of recruitment for clams and other marine species that make up Niue’s coral reefs.
Results Framework
UNDAF Outcome(s): UNDAF for the Pacific Sub-region 2013-2017 – Outcome Area 1: Environmental management, climate change and disaster risk management
UNDP Strategic Plan Outcome:
Legal and regulatory frameworks, policies and institutions enabled to ensure the conservation, sustainable use, and access and benefit sharing of natural resources, biodiversity and ecosystems, in line with international conventions and national legislation (Output 2.5).
UNDP Strategic Plan Outputs: -
Solutions developed at national and sub-national levels for sustainable management of natural resources, ecosystem services, chemicals and waste (Output 1.3)
Executing Agency/Implementing Partner: Ministry of Natural Resources
Responsible Partner:
Department of Education, Taoga Niue, Department of Public Works (Water), Office of the Premier, Treasury Department and UNDP
