IUCN

An environmental flow is the water regime provided within a river, wetland or coastal zone to maintain ecosystems and their benefits where there are competing water uses and where flows are regulated. Pioneering efforts in South Africa, Australia and the United States have shown that the process to establish them poses great challenges.

Water ecosystems have long been perceived by decision makers as having little value simply because their economic value is poorly understood and rarely articulated. Calculating the economic value of an ecosystem is a means of providing information which can be used to make better and more informed choices about how resources are managed, used and allocated.

Among the various innovative instruments linked to the Kyoto Protocol is the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which offers developed countries a chance to offset some of their greenhouse gas emissions by funding development projects in areas such as renewable energy and forestry. Over the last two years, the rules of the CDM and those relating in particular to afforestation and reforestation have evolved significantly.

The Lunama and Kalametiya lagoons are located on the southeastern coast of Sri Lanka. Part of the Dry Zone of the country, their importance led to their being designated in 1984 as a Sanctuary under the Fauna and Flora Protection Ordinance. The objective of this study was to compile a comprehensive set of baseline data on biodiversity in the Lunama-Kalametiya wetland system in order to facilitate management of this protected area.

Great uncertainty typically surrounds decisions and management actions in the conservation of biodiversity and natural resource management, and yet there are risks of serious and irreversible harm for both biodiversity and the humans that rely on it. The Precautionary Principle underlies all international conservation efforts and entails acting to avoid serious or irreversible environmental harm, despite lack of scientific certainty as to the likelihood, magnitude or cause of harm.

The Vth IUCN World Parks Congress held in 2003 in Durban, South Africa was host to a stream of workshops dedicated to the broad topic of building support for protected areas. As a means of providing a more coherent picture, a separate set of workshops was held on communicating the benefits of protected areas. The collection of papers contained within this publication brings together the experience and wisdom of the leading thinkers and practitioners of protected area planning and management.

There is an urgent need for concrete steps to foster the mutual supportiveness of the objectives embodied in the Convention on Biological Diversity and multilateral trade rules under the World Trade Organization. Intellectual property is one area of debate where such efforts could be undertaken.

Dans le bleu profond de la mer, du Groenland aux îles polynésiennes, se cachent des paysages d'une beauté insoupçonnée, un monde mal connu qui occupe les trois quarts du globe. A travers des textes limpides et plus de 400 photographies exceptionnelles, les scientifiques Laurent Ballesta et Pierre Descamp nous font découvrir toute la magie des océans. Chaque page est une anecdote, une petite histoire qui nous familiarise avec les mystères de la biodiversité.

Since the 1998 coral bleaching and mortality, which affected reefs throughout the tropics, a number of projects dealing with research, monitoring and management of coral reefs have been conducted. A number of these projects have been carried out under the CORDIO Program in the Indian Ocean where coral reefs have been severely impacted by bleaching related mortality and other anthropogenic influences.