The Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) is designed to safeguard the world’s biologically richest and most threatened regions, known as biodiversity hotspots. It is a \ud
joint initiative of l’Agence Française de Développement, Conservation International (CI), the European Commission, the Global Environment Facility, the Government of Japan, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the World Bank. \ud
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A fundamental purpose of CEPF is to engage civil society, such as community groups, \ud
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), academic institutions and private enterprises, in \ud
biodiversity conservation in the hotspots. To guarantee their success, these efforts must complement existing strategies and programs of national governments and other \ud
conservation funders. To this end, CEPF promotes working alliances among diverse \ud
groups, combining unique capacities and reducing duplication of efforts for a comprehensive, coordinated approach to conservation. One way in which CEPF does this \ud
is through preparation of “ecosystem profiles”—shared strategies, developed in consultation with local stakeholders, which articulate a five-year investment strategy informed by a detailed situational analysis. \ud
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This document is the ecosystem profile for the East Melanesian Islands Hotspot, which \ud
includes the island nations of Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands and the islands region of \ud
Papua New Guinea (PNG), which includes the provinces of Manus, New Ireland, East \ud
New Britain and West New Britain plus the Autonomous Region of Bougainville. The \ud
East Melanesian Islands qualify as a hotspot due to their high levels of plant and animal \ud
endemism and accelerating levels of habitat loss, caused chiefly by widespread commercial logging and mining, expansion of subsistence and plantation agriculture, population increase, and the impacts of climate change and variability. The East Melanesian Islands Hotspot holds exceptional cultural and linguistic diversity. Vanuatu, for example, has 108 living languages: more per unit area than any other country. Because many languages are spoken by only a few hundred people, they are disappearing, leading to a rapid erosion of traditional knowledge and practice. This is highly significant in a region where most land and resources are under customary ownership, and local people are true stewards of biodiversity. \u