The project will run for four years (2015-18) with GEF budget of USD 7.4 million and substantial co-financing from Fiji Government, UNDP and Conservation NGOs. This R2R approach in priority catchments will bolster FijiÔÇÖs national system of marine protected areas through an enhanced, representative and sustainable system of LMMA including greater protection of threatened marine species. Negative impacts of land-based activities on these MPAs will be reduced through development and implementation of integrated catchment management plans, including mangrove protection, the adoption of appropriate sustainable land use practices and riparian restoration in adjoining upstream watersheds as well as terrestrial PAs, restored and rehabilitated forests. These terrestrial PAs, coupled with an increase in the permanent native forest estate, including through assisted natural reforestation of degraded grasslands, will contribute to FijiÔÇÖs REDD+ strategy through an increase in forest carbon stocks. The new PAs will help conserve threatened ecosystems, such as lowland tropical rainforest and moist forests, and species such as critically endangered/endangered plants, amphibians and reptiles and freshwater vertebrates and invertebrates. The R2R planning and overarching management approach is comprehensive; it aims to cover all activities within a catchment and out to the sea to ensure natural resource sustainability and biodiversity. The selected priority catchments are Ba River, Tuva River and Waidina River/Rewa Delta on Viti Levu and Labasa River, Vunivia River and Tunuloa district on Vanua Levu: these catchments encompass a diverse and geographically dispersed group with markedly different environments and scales, intensities of land use and degradation, challenges and opportunities and provide an ideal suite of learning environments for biodiversity conservation (Component 1), forest carbon stock protection and increase (Component 2) and integrated natural resources management (Component 3). Broadly based Catchment Management Committees will be established for those catchments, viz. Ba, Labasa, Tuva and Waidina/Rewa which have major catchment-wide matters concerns such as land degradation, sedimentation and flooding. Component 4 (knowledge management) will ensure that project experiences and results are properly captured and widely disseminated, and contribute to data and information systems on biodiversity, forests, climate change, and land, coastal and marine management in Fiji.