Introduction

Knowledge of the status of species and habitats forms a fundamental basis for understanding biodiversity at all scales (Chapter 34) and ecosystem functions and services (Part III and Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005). This facilitates identifying the capacity-building needs for appropriate interventions that will enhance and promote sustainability. This creates a need for knowledge of marine biological diversity and habitats from a marine ecosystem approach, and of how biodiversity varies in relation to various levels of anthropogenic perturbations. Gaps in scientific knowledge, technological advances, human skills and infrastructure for the conservation of marine biodiversity and habitats are crucial. Part VI addresses these issues focusing on the major oceans in relation to marine ecosystems, habitats and major species groups that are emerging from our assessments as potentially threatened, declining or needing special attention. All these categories need a variety of capacity building, technical skills, technology and infrastructure to address their trends. To facilitate this capacity building, we undertook the identification of knowledge gaps mainly from the Part VI Chapters, and the capacity building needed to address socio-economic issues for human well-being. Chapter 32 and this Chapter both address capacity-building needs. However, whereas the identification of needs in Chapter 32 was based on outcomes of regional workshops and the Chapters of Part V, this chapter is based on all the authored chapters, which also include identification of gaps from literature reviews on the oceans.

To address the objective of the Regular Process to ensure that capacity building and technology transfer are done through promoting cooperation, not only North to South but also South to South cooperation (UNGA, 2010; UNGA/AHWGW, 2009; UNGA/AHWGW, 2010), the synthesis is done in geographical areas following the oceans and the major regional seas addressed in Chapter 36. Further capacity needs were identified in relation to the knowledge gaps from the chapters focused on the overall status of the major groups of species and habitats, including the socio-economic aspects of their conservation.

The marine species groups that were given special attention or protection are: marine mammals, seabirds, marine reptiles, sharks, tuna and billfish. These were dealt with globally without specifically linking them to particular oceans.