Conservation

Latin American and Caribbean countries and regional programmes, working with regional and global organisations, on Sunday, December 7, 2014 in Lima, Peru launched “Initiative 20×20,” a country-led effort to bring 20 million hectares of degraded land into restoration by 2020. This is an area larger than Uruguay. As part of the initiative, five impact investors also announced plans to invest up to ...

Solving the problem of global climate change is impossible without huge shift in private sector investments, since this sector represents trillions of dollars with vast majority of economic activities around the world. This is the view of Civil Society in contributing to a discussion at the ongoing climate change talks in Lima, Peru. According to Dr. Thomas Jallah of the ...

A new report by Global Witness sheds light on what’s driving the high number of killings of environmental defenders in Peru, less than a week before the country hosts the UN climate talks in Lima. Peru’s Deadly Environment calls into question the commitments of Peru to protect its carbon-rich forests and the people who live in them, in light of unfettered illegal ...

A new compendium providing the latest and best professional information needed for protected area practitioner capacity development was released this week in the margins of the 6th IUCN World Parks Congress. Titled “Protected Area Governance and Management,” the compendium provides information to support capacity development training of protected area field officers, field managers and executive-level managers for improving governance and management of ...

The 11th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties (CMS COP11) to the UNEP Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) will take place from 4-9 November 2014 in Quito, Ecuador. A High Level Ministerial Panel will be held on 3 November to discuss how to reconcile the rights of nature with the green economy in ...

The Brazilian Federal Government has announced the creation of over 58,000 hectares of new marine Protected Areas in the northern state of Pará, in the Amazon region.  Decrees published on Monday 13 October by the Presidency of Brazil with the Ministry of Environment established three new marine extractive reserves and expanded an existing marine extractive reserve. The measures will underpin biodiversity ...

Bold and innovative action is urgently required if governments are to meet the globally-agreed Strategic Plan for Biodiversity and its Aichi Targets by 2020, says a United Nations progress report on the state of global biodiversity. Launched on Monday (October 6, 2014) one year before the halfway point of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 and the United Nations Decade ...

An innovative public-private partnership of multinationals, governments, civil society and indigenous peoples today pledged to cut the loss of forests in half by 2020 and end it a decade later in 2030 – a move that will eliminate the emission of between 4.5 and 8.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year. That is equivalent to removing the carbon emissions ...

Tortoises and freshwater turtles may be slow movers, but they are being smuggled at lightning speed through Thailand, with close to 19,000 seized in six years. A new TRAFFIC report, Seizures of Tortoises and Freshwater Turtles in Thailand 2008-2013, analyses 53 reported seizures of tortoises and freshwater turtles in Thailand, over half of which took place at Suvarnabhumi International Airport in ...

Five species of sharks and two manta ray species on Sunday, September 14 received protection under the United Nation’s Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) when formal measures to regulate their international trade came into effect. The five sharks and two manta rays species include Scalloped Hammerhead Shark Sphyrna lewini, Great Hammerhead Shark ...