conservation
San Jose, Costa Rica - Ricardo Rodriguez sits at a picnic table inside the national park he manages and watches the blue Pacific pounding the sickle-shaped beach. Nearby, a white-faced monkey searches for food scraps, while an iguana lolls in the sun. Visitors awed by the natural beauty of Manuel Antonio National Park and Costa Rica's other spectacular wilderness areas don't understand how...
Because of dominant shifting agriculture practices, local ecological knowledge and traditional practice in mountain regions in Madagascar have long been seen as obstacles to development. Now, they are increasingly recognised as offering solutions to socio-ecological transformations constrained by rapid changes of the cultural, socio-economic and socio-political context. Instead of a passive...
The paper looks at conservation, sustainable use and benefit sharing. It considers the 'ecosystem approach', looks at protected areas and the restoration, rehabilitation of degraded ecosystems and recovery of species as well as management of invasive and alien species. The traditional knowledge of local and indigenous communities is considered. Options for sustainable use including sustainable...
The Indian Himalayas are rich reservoir of plant diversity and medicinal plant diversity is an important component of that. As one amongst the top repositories of medicinal herbs the state of Himachal Pradesh in Himalaya is one of the major sources of raw material to the global market. Unsustainable extraction of medicinal herbs has led to the endangerment of its several high value taxa. Ex-...
The article introduces the importance of fresh and clean water for human survival and maintenance of ecosystem on land. It outlines the concept of integrated water resource management and its essential ingredients for sustainable development. The atmospheric, geospheric and biospheric interactions in Himalayas are briefly dealt with. Himalayan snow and ice reservoirs, its lake systems and...
The Eastern Arc Mountains form a chain of some of Africa's oldest peaks from southeastern Kenya through Tanzania. Their proximity to the Indian Ocean and the prevailing winds results in high rainfall when compared to surrounding areas. Because of the moist conditions in comparison to the surrounding areas, the chain and its montane, submontane, and lowland forests are noted for their high...
The possible effects of enhanced greenhouse climate change have been wide debated in the general and scientific community. The current distribution of alpine and high country flora and fauna species, their current predicted climatic envelope determined using BIOCLIM and several scenarios of regional climate change developed by the CSIRO were utilized to develop scenarios for the alpine...
Integrating activities for conservation and development through people's participation and collaboration among different institutional and social actors is being increasingly recognized as the most promising approach to sustainable natural resource management. This document describes and discusses the experience in this area of the Inter-regional Project for Participatory Upland Conservation...
In the northern highland sierra of Ecuador, marketing of medicinal teas on a micro-enterprise and supplementary income level offers an opportunity to apply indigenous knowledge to sustainable grassroots development. At the same, this type of project promotes in situ conservation of both indigenous knowledge and biodiversity. This article presents and discusses a project that is currently...
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