IUCN

The fourth part in a series of action plan, this publication covers less than one-quarter of the world's antelope species that are found in North Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Herds numbering in the tens of thousands formerly occurred across the steppes and semi-deserts of Eurasia and India, but these have nearly all been reduced to fractions of their earlier size. Populations are fragmented across the region and several species have disappeared altogether during recent decades.

This book is a unique attempt to bring to light the status of environmental legal systems in Portuguese speakiing countries across Africa and Brazil, presenting a platform for future South-South collaboration. The different articles present environmental legal frameworks of Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Principe, and focus on national legislative processes in the context of environmental concerns.

It is sometimes assumed that protected areas must be in conflict with the rights and traditions of indigenous and other traditional peoples on their domains. In reality, where indigenous peoples are interested in the conservation and traditional use of their lands, waters, territories and the natural and cultural resources that they contain, conflicts need not arise.

One of the major impediments to the advancement of medicinal plant conservation is the difficulty of accessing and analysing the relevant literature. Books and papers on medicinal plants count by the tens of thousands worlwide.

The commitment of the international community to ensure an equitable supply of food and nutrition to everyone on Earth has been reiterated many times. However, there are very few practical examples on how such equity and benefit sharing principles are to be put into practice. The proceedings of this workshop held in February 1998 relate experiences and lessons from a South-South perspective and critically address the translation of recommendations from this workshop into actions.

Numerous initiatives are now underway to deal with the prevention, control, eradication and management of invasive alien species. A regional workshop was held in 1999 to discuss the problem in South and Southeast Asia. This publication contains the country and status reports presented at the workshop and the recommendations for action in the region.