REGIONAL ACTIVITIES

Some economic and financial mechanisms go beyond the scale of RESCCUE pilot sites, and are relevant to the entire Pacific islands region. RESCCUE explored opportunities associated with four of them:

• Greening taxes and subsidies, as a way to limit harmful behaviours, encourage environmentally-friendly ones and/or generate additional funding.
• Strengthening the mitigation hierarchy implementation, both as an economic incentive for project developers and governments, and a source of funding for ecological restoration and conservation through biodiversity offsets;
• Using land and land-rights transactions as a way to placing a legal restriction on a particular plot of land to limit development or resource use and/or impose certain management practices;
• Resorting to economic incentives to control invasive species, so as to bridge the funding gap in invasive species management and increase the harvest effort of these species.

For each of these mechanisms, the project reviewed past and existing efforts, identified challenges and opportunities, and provided recommendations both at the regional level and for each of the four RESCCUE countries and territories. 

In New Caledonia and French Polynesia, upon requests from partner administrations, the project developed precise taxes and subsidies reform proposals and assessed their socio-economic and environmental impacts. Similar in-depth studies are needed in any country wishing to engage in actual reforms.