Linking Practice and Policy in Eastern Africa.

Wildlife conservation and other environmental protection projects can have tremendous impact on the lives and livelihoods of the often mobile, difficult-to-reach, and marginal peoples who inhabit the same territory. The contributors to this collection of case studies, social scientists as well as natural scientists, are concerned with this human element in biodiversity. They examine the interface between conservation and indigenous communities forced to move or to settle elsewhere in order to accommodate environmental policies and biodiversity concerns. The case studies investigate successful and not so successful community-managed, as well as local participatory, conservation projects in Africa, the Middle East, South and South Eastern Asia, Australia and Latin America. There are lessons to be learned from recent efforts in community managed conservation and this volume significantly contributes to that discussion.

Resilience is a term that is gaining currency in conservation and sustainable development, though its meaning and value in this context is yet to be defined. Searching for Resilience in Sustainable Development examines ways in which resilience may be created within the web of ecological, socio-economic and cultural systems that make up the world in. The authors embark upon a learning journey exploring both robust and fragile systems and asking questions of groups and individuals actively involved in building or maintaining resilience. Through a series of wide ranging interviews the authors give voice to the many different approaches to thinking of and building resilience that may otherwise stay rooted in and confined by specific disciplinary, professional or spatial contexts. The book documents emerging trends, shifting tactics and future pathways for the conservation and sustainable development movement post Rio+20, arriving at a set of diverse but connected conclusions and questions in relation to the resilience of people and planet. This book is ideal for students and researchers working in the fields of conservation, sustainable development, education, systems thinking and development studies. It will also be of great interest to NGOs and government officers whose interests and responsibilities focus on conserving or reconstructing biodiversity and system resilience.

A global assessment of potential and anticipated impacts of efforts to achieve the SDGs on forests and related socio-economic systems. This title is available as Open Access via Cambridge Core.

Divided into three sections, this book explores the three main pillars of sustainable development, namely economy, environment and society, and their interlinkages at the regional level. The first section, Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) for sustainable development, focuses on international agreements and national legislation, as well as the challenges in implementing ABS in e.g. India. In turn, the second section examines the process of forming Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs) at the Local Self Government (LSG) level to promote environmental sustainability, highlighting local and community-level conservation initiatives that have led to the conservation of habitats and species. The third section addresses poverty eradication and food security. The case studies included demonstrate how the combination of traditional knowledge and modern techniques can enhance the productivity of traditional crop varieties, yielding greater benefits for communities. The aim of this volume is to disseminate the lessons learned from these case studies, as well as the findings from projects already in place, which can offer recommendations that can be applied to similar problems elsewhere in an attempt to find environmental solutions for sustainable development. Further, it introduces readers to new approaches to inclusive development, demonstrating that participation and grass root empowerment are key drivers of equitable and sustainable development.

Saving endangered species presents a critical and increasingly pressing challenge for conservation and sustainability movements, and is also matter of survival and livelihoods for the world's poorest and vulnerable communities. In 1973, a global Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) was adopted to stem the extinction of many species. In 2015, as part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 15) the United Nations called for urgent action to protect endangered species and their natural habitats. This volume focuses on the legal implementation of CITES to achieve the global SDGs. Activating interdisciplinary analysis and case studies across jurisdictions, the contributors analyse the potential for CITES to promote more sustainable development, proposing international and national regulatory innovations for implementing CITES. They consider recent innovations and key intervention points along flora and fauna value chains, advancing coherent recommendations to strengthen CITES implementation, including through the regulation of trade in endangered species globally and locally.

Despite its tiny size and seeming marginality to world affairs, the Central American republic of Costa Rica has long been considered an important site for experimentation in cutting-edge environmental policy. From protected area management to ecotourism to payment for environmental services (PES) and beyond, for the past half-century the country has successfully positioned itself at the forefront of novel trends in environmental governance and sustainable development. Yet the increasingly urgent dilemma of how to achieve equitable economic development in a world of ecosystem decline and climate change presents new challenges, testing Costa Rica’s ability to remain a leader in innovative environmental governance. This book explores these challenges, how Costa Rica is responding to them, and the lessons this holds for current and future trends regarding environmental governance and sustainable development. It provides the first comprehensive assessment of successes and challenges as they play out in a variety of sectors, including agricultural development, biodiversity conservation, water management, resource extraction, and climate change policy. By framing Costa Rica as an “ecolaboratory,” the contributors in this volume examine the lessons learned and offer a path for the future of sustainable development research and policy in Central America and beyond.

This book addresses a timely and compelling emerging issue related to the conservation and sustainable use of marine resources and the sustainable development of the coastal community. Marine protected areas (MPAs) make a remarkable contribution to the protection of marine communities by providing sustainable livelihoods, deriving financial benefits from the development of fisheries and tourism, as well as by restoring ocean productivity and preventing further environmental degradation. These areas have been considered the cornerstone of a blue economy due to their substantial economic, social and environmental contributions. However, MPAs around the world are severely hampered by a multitude of issues and challenges such as inefficient management, poor socioeconomic conditions and environmental degradation due to human activities, overexploitation of marine resources, degradation of water quality, massive waste production and climate change. These are the main obstacles to economic, social and environmental sustainability. Hence, a collaborative management approach and an integrated management policy framework is urgently needed for the economic, social, political, cultural, technological, and ecological development of coastal communities.

Conservation, Sustainability, and Environmental Justice in India highlights the environmental challenges that India faces, largely due to high population and limited natural resources, and discusses the gap between the intent of environmental policies and the actualization of those policies. Contributors posit that the protection of the environment poses a fundamental challenge to the nation’s desire to industrialize and develop more quickly, arguing that the conservation of biodiversity, protection of wetlands, prevention of environmental pollution, and promotion of ecological balance are all crucial in enabling sustainable development. This book poses the question of how large a role the judiciary system should play in the protection of the environment as a vital body that passes policies to promote conservation and sustainable development.