This report synthesises key findings on biodiversity and ecosystem services from the Environmental Performance Reviews completed for Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru between 2013 and 2017. The report aims to provide a sense of the common challenges facing these Latin American countries, the strategies being used to tackle them, the gaps that remain and how these can be addressed. Focusing on Latin America is particularly pertinent given the great wealth of biodiversity in the region and the growing pressures on its conservation and sustainable use.

This book is open access under a CC-BY license. The multiple purposes of nature – livelihood for communities, revenues for states, commodities for companies, and biodiversity for conservationists – have turned environmental governance in Latin America into a highly contested arena. In such a resource-rich region, unequal power relations, conflicting priorities, and trade-offs among multiple goals have led to a myriad of contrasting initiatives that are reshaping social relations and rural territories. This edited collection addresses these tensions by unpacking environmental governance as a complex process of formulating and contesting values, procedures and practices shaping the access, control and use of natural resources. Contributors from various fields address the challenges, limitations, and possibilities for a more sustainable, equal, and fair development. In this book, environmental governance is seen as an overarching concept defining the dynamic and multi-layered repertoire of society-nature interactions, where images of nature and discourses on the use of natural resources are mediated by contextual processes at multiple scales.

IUCN's 5th World Parks Congress (2003) concluded that parks should not exist as unique islands, but need to be planned and managed as an integral part of the broader landscape. Ecological networks provide an operational model for conserving biodiversity that is based on ecological principles and allow a degree of human use of the landscape. This publication illustrates the development of several ecological networks around the world, demonstrating their benefits both for conservation and sustainable development.

In this volume thirty-six scientists from Latin American and the United States contribute substantially to our knowledge of Latin American mammals. Part 1 provides a history of the pioneers in collection-based mammalogy, which began only about two centuries ago. Chapters in Part 2 demonstrate the search for theories and methodologies that will help us understand how the fauna of this region came to be. Part 3 addresses conservation policy and management in light of recent enormous changes in the natural habitats of Latin America. Part 4 explores the need for conservation-education programs in Latin America as a critical step in the development of a sound land-use ethic. The preface of Latin American Mammalogy, overviews of the four sections, and summaries of the twenty-three chapters are given in Spanish as well as English.

Developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America are increasingly influenced by human-induced environmental changes. It is crucial that sustainable development be based on insights into these expanding processes--conservation as well as deterioration. Nature's Geography offers a new perspective on the geographical nature of these changes. The book reveals how human-environment relations must be understood at multiple scales and time frames. Editors Karl S. Zimmerer and Kenneth R. Young have forged an exciting group of case studies from distinguished geographers focusing on high mountains, tropical forests, and lowlands, as well as humid and arid-semiarid landscapes. Each chapter analyzes the implications for meshing environmental protection and sound resource use with development. The case studies evaluate three topics: spatial habitat fragmentation and forest dynamics; disturbances in mountain ecosystems; and the major activities of settled areas, chiefly farming, livestock-raising, and forestry. Included are analyses of interactions involving wildlife, such as primates and wild pandas; assessment of fire impacts and road-building; long-term forest management as well as recent techniques; and the role of environmental variation and ecosystem properties in agriculture and rangeland. Nature's Geography demonstrates the vital importance of advancing a new approach to geography. This definitive study of landscape change and environmental dynamics will have wide appeal for those interested in geography, ecology, environmental studies, conservation biology, and development studies.

This book is a collection of readings that explore environmental issues in Latin America and the Caribbean using natural science and social science methods. These papers demonstrate the value of interdisciplinary approaches to analyze and solve environmental problems. The essays are organized into five parts: conservation challenges; national policies, local communities, and rural development; market mechanisms for protecting public goods; public participation and environmental justice; and the effects of development policies on the environment.

Approach; Major ecosystem types, major habitat types, and ecoregions of LAC; Conservation status of terretrial ecoregions of LAC; Biological distinctiveness of territorial ecoregions of LAC at different biogeographic scales results; Integrating biological distinctiveness and conservation status; Conservation assessment of mangrove ecosystems.

This report synthesises key findings on biodiversity and ecosystem services from the Environmental Performance Reviews completed for Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru between 2013 and 2017. The report aims to provide a sense of the common challenges facing these Latin American countries ...

The loss of the earth's biological diversity is widely recognized as a critical environmental problem. That loss is most severe in developing countries, where the conditions of human existence are most difficult. Conserving Biodiversity presents an agenda for research that can provide information to formulate policy and design conservation programs in the Third World. The book includes discussions of research needs in the biological sciences as well as economics and anthropology, areas of critical importance to conservation and sustainable development. Although specifically directed toward development agencies, non-governmental organizations, and decisionmakers in developing nations, this volume should be of interest to all who are involved in the conservation of biological diversity.