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  Biodiversity information on the Internet: cornucopia or confusion? »

  The range of information on biodiversity currently available via the Internet is reviewed and its accessibility, usefulness and relevance to biodiversity research and to policy decision making assessed. Commercial and non-commercial databases are reviewed. The future of information via the net is also reviewed, in particular the role of the `Clearing House Mechanism' of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Biodiversity Conservation Information System.

  Resource Type: Journal Papers
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  A horizon scan of global conservation issues for 2010 »

  Horizon scanning identifies emerging issues in a given field sufficiently early to conduct research to inform policy and practice. Our group of horizon scanners, including academics and researchers, convened to identify fifteen nascent issues that could affect the conservation of biological diversity. These include the impacts of and potential human responses to climate change, novel biological and digital technologies, novel pollutants and invasive species. We expect to repeat this process and collation annually.

  Resource Type: Journal Papers
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  A comparison between Tundra and wet grassland breeding waders with special reference to the Ruff (Philomachus pugnax) »

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  Capacity building for biological diversity – a situation and needs analysis for the Environmental Management Group (EMG) »

  The Environmental Management Group (EMG). in 2004, decided to focus its attention on environmental capacity building, following concerns of UN agencies and multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) in this area. Consultants were asked to prepare draft studies for the further work of the EMG on capacity building in the areas of biological diversity and chemicals, respectively. The draft studies were further developed following discussions in the EMG and an Issue Management Group established by the EMG. This paper is the result of these discussions for the area of capacity building for biological diversity.

  Resource Type: Reports
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  Prospects for Biodiversity »

  Assuming no radical transformation in human behavior, we can expect important changes in biodiversity and ecosystem services by 2050. A considerable number of species extinctions will have taken place. Existing large blocks of tropical forest will be much reduced and fragmented, but temperate forests and some tropical forests will be stable or increasing in area, although the latter will be biotically impoverished. Marine ecosystems will be very different from today's, with few large marine predators, and freshwater biodiversity will be severely reduced almost everywhere. These changes will not, in themselves, threaten the survival of humans as a species.

  Resource Type: Journal Papers
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  Status of the Baikal Teal in the Lower Indigirka Basin, Siberia »

  Small local hunting communities in Siberia are very distant from any governmental control. Hunted waterbird species, including globally and regionally threatened species, rely for their well-being on the self regulation of remote hunting communities. Interviewed hunters showed a profound knowledge of Baikal Teal, its population status, and the causes of their past decline. Whether the knowledge is shared by other communities in the region and beyond in Northern Siberia needs verification.
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  Resource Type: Journal Papers
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  Tracking the ecological overshoot of the human economy »

  Sustainability requires living within the regenerative capacity of the biosphere. In an attempt to measure the extent to which humanity satisfies this requirement, we use existing data to translate human demand on the environment into the area required for the production of food and other goods, together with the absorption of wastes. Our accounts indicate that human demand may well have exceeded the biosphere's regenerative capacity since the 1980s. According to this preliminary and exploratory assessment, humanity's load corresponded to 70% of the capacity of the global biosphere in 1961, and grew to 120% in 1999.

  Resource Type: Journal Papers
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  Outcomes, not implementation, predict conservation success »

  We applied a conceptual framework and score-card developed by the Cambridge Conservation Forum (CCF) to a sample of 60 conservation activities to determine the predictive power of implementation measures versus measures of key outcomes (later steps in the models defined in the CCF tools). We show that assessing key outcomes is often more difficult than quantifying the degree of implementation of a project but that, while implementation is a poor predictor of success, key outcomes provide a feasible and much more reliable proxy for whether a project will deliver real conservation benefits. The CCF framework and evaluation tool provide a powerful basis for synthesizing past experience and, with wider application, will help to identify factors that affect the success of conservation activities.

  Resource Type: Journal Papers
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  ECO-ED: rhetoric or progress? »

  The World Congress for Education and Communication on Environment and Development (ECO-ED), which took place in Toronto, Canada, 17-21 October 1992, was multisectoral in scope, accommodating individuals and groups from business, aid agencies, the NGO community, government, the media, UN agencies (UNEP/UNESCO), educators and education associations.

  Resource Type: Journal Papers
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  Model-based uncertainty in species range prediction »

  Our analyses show significant differences between predictions from different models, with predicted changes in range size by 2030 differing in both magnitude and direction (e.g. from 92 loss to 322 gain). We explain differences with reference to two characteristics of the modelling techniques: data input requirements (presence/absence vs. presence-only approaches) and assumptions made by each algorithm when extrapolating beyond the range of data used to build the model. The effects of these factors should be carefully considered when using this modelling approach to predict species ranges. Main conclusions We highlight an important source of uncertainty in assessments of the impacts of climate change on biodiversity and emphasize that model predictions should be interpreted in policy-guiding applications along with a full appreciation of uncertainty.

  Resource Type: Journal Papers