conventions
Governments are often accused of responding only to short-term and parochial considerations. It is therefore remarkable that representatives of 190 countries recently committed themselves at the Convention on Biological Diversity to
reducing biodiversity loss. This presents conservation biologists with perhaps their greatest challenge of the decade. The authors of this Policy Forum...
Climate change is happening and people have begun to feel its impacts on their daily lives. Clear indications of these impacts can be seen on Himalayan glaciers, which are melting at rapid rates and consequently form massive glacial lakes, with a risk of catastrophic glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs). GLOFs result in loss of lives, property, and costly infrastructure, as...
Analysis of this book, that provides an overview of both the state of knowledge and debate on the most important topics related to mountain areas, which mountain people and scholars necessarily see as issues. It is admirable that the three co-editors contacted a plethora of recognized experts in their fields to produce a book on seemingly disparate topics in different regions of the world....
Modern developments in biotechnology and the continuing expansion of global trade have allowed society to gain greater access to, and to derive benefits from, the world’s biological and genetic diversity. Eleven years ago the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) entered into force, with a goal of ensuring that in the process of obtaining and sharing such benefits, society would...
Climate change is not a new issue. The risks associated with climate change were already a topic of discussion at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro back in 1992. However, only after another 15 years climate change has now gained its rightful place at the top of the (development) policy agenda. For this to happen it took numerous UN climate conferences, the release of Al Gore's global warming...
Africa is home to an exceptional diversity of biological species and ecosystems, having the world’s second largest tropical rainforests, large freshwater and mountain ecosystems and six of the world’s 25 biodiversity hotspots. In Africa, however, a large part of the population directly depends on the environment and natural resources for their livelihoods. Loss or depletion of...
The recently concluded World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in agreement with several national governments, international and multilateral organisations, stakeholders and communities, declared specific goals with regard to sustainable development. WSSD comes ten years after the Rio Earth Summit (1992) which pledged political and financial support to enhance the quality of human life...
Mountains cover 24% of the land surface of our planet. These very diverse regions, stretching from the Equator almost to both poles, are home to 12% of the global population. While many mountain people live in rural areas – often in remote, poor and disadvantaged communities – many others are urban, living in towns and cities in mountain valleys and on lower mountain slopes....
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