An education program for elementary school children in Fukushima, which uses the star sand from Okinoerabu Island, was performed. This program aimed to help children understand the nature and geological history of Okinoerabu Island through observation and experimentation: the acid dissolution of four different types of sand including the star sand from Okinoerabu Island. The children found that different sands had various colors, shapes, and solubilities when dissolving in an acid water solution. This program enhanced the children’s interests and understanding of star sand as well as the formation of Okinoerabu Island.

The coral reefs in Palau are known to among the most biodiverse coral reefs, with highly diverse reef ecosystems within a small geographical area. Palau’s rich coral reef ecosystem produces a large amount of tourism income which sustains Palau’s economy. However, the number of tourists has exponentially increased during recent years, and multiple local stressors are causing concern about their effects on coral reef ecosystems, which are superimposed on top of ongoing climate change impacts. There is now a strong need to explore ways to realize a sustainable society under these combined stressors. For the sustainable use of marine resources, it is essential to plan adaptation policies to counteract local stressors, taking into account climate change impacts acting as an environmental “baseline”. Therefore, in this paper we aimed at evaluating Palauan reef’s ecosystem baseline under climate change, by reviewing scientific knowledge including the effects of ocean warming, sea level rise, and ocean acidification in Palau, before exploring adaptive strategies for this small reef island country. Results showed the environmental states of Palauan reefs are relatively healthy compared to other reefs around the world, which may be the reason of the high recovery capacity demonstrated by a recovery of less than 10 years from the mass bleaching event in 1998. Additionally, the diverse marine environments seem to protect organisms that are potentially resilient to ocean acidification and warming environments expected over the next 50-100 years. The reefs of Palau are also considered to hold high adaptive capacity to sea level rise. The health and high resilience of Palau’s reefs might partly rely on national environmental initiatives such as the marine protected area network and the environmental tax, supported by the high awareness of Palauans towards marine environmental conservation. Local stressor management under long-term strategies considering climate change scenarios for keeping healthy and adaptive reefs are essential to realize sustainable societies in reef island countries such as Palau.

Small island countries on coral atolls are formed by reef-building organisms including corals and foraminifers distributed on coral reefs. The coasts are protected from erosion by plants including mangroves. In order to maintain the land, ecosystem-based adaptation to climate change, including sea-level rise, is thus essential. In this report, we summarize our related activities conducted at Tuvalu and other small island countries.

Regarding coral reef conservation, the unique international frame, known as the International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI), was established, and efforts have been made to promote research/monitoring, sustainable management, capacity building, and evaluation/review on actions taken. Contents of discussion at general meetings and action plans have been changing according to the interests of the ICRI’s secretariat, which is in charge by a few specific countries every two years. Over the last few years, it is noteworthy that the ICRI has been arranging funding for conservation activities and that the ICRI has been strengthening links with relevant international frames/organizations and also monitoring activities on coral reefs. In this article, we review such recent (since 2016) activities of the ICRI and thereafter we introduce relevant international trends as well as Japan’s various roles in this context.

The Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN) was developed by the International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI) established in 1994 to collect scientific information to support coral reef conservation. GCRMN adopted a top-down system with a global coordinator overseeing 17 nodes that cover global coral distribution. In the beginning of GCRMN history, Northeast Asia node and Southeast Asia node were located within the East Asia region. Both nodes have fused into a single “East Asia Region” node since a joint meeting held in 2002. The network of this region has been reconstructed to recognize ownership of the region’s reefs as “Our Reef” and is building up a strong bottom-up framework for enhancing the initiative on coral conservation. The network has been attempting to adopt a formalized framework as the “Asia Pacific Coral Reef Society”.

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