Biodiversity

As the need increases for sound estimates of impending rates of animal and plant species extinction, scientists must have a firm grounding in the qualitative and quantitative methods required to make the best possible predictions. Extinction Rates offers the most wide-ranging and practical introduction to those methods available.

Le hotspot  (point chaud) de la biodiversité du bassin méditerranéen est bien connu pour l'importance que sa biodiversité revêt à l'échelle mondiale, mais l'importance de la biodiversité d'eau douce n'était pas reconnue précédemment. Dans le cadre de ce projet, les ZCB d'eau douce ont maintenant été identifées, cartographiées et validées dans une grande partie du hotspot méditerranéen.

The Eastern Mediterranean region supports just over 4.4% of the global human population yet contains only 1.1% of its renewable water resources, which are under constant threat from the impacts of unsustainable water withdrawal, dam development and climate change.

While the Mediterranean basin biodiversity hotspot is well known for its globally important biodiversity, its freshwater biodiversity has not been as widely recognized for its importance. Through this project, freshwater key biodiversity areas (KBAs) have now been identified, mapped and validated throughout much of the Mediterranean hotspot.

In preparation for the International Conference on Biodiversity and Climate Change in Guadeloupe in October 2014, IUCN has commissioned this assessment of the implementation of the Message from Reunion Island of 2008, which resulted from the historic first conference on biodivesrity and climate change in the European Union (EU) overseas entitties that was convened by IUCN together with the Government of France and the Regional Council of Reunion Island in July 2008.

Businesses are increasingly mindful of their impacts on biodiversity and how they can address these impacts through proactive biodiversity management. Monitoring can provide companies with a better understanding whether they are achieving their intended results, and also aid in decision-making.

A large number of approaches have been developed over the last four decades for identifying places of significance for biodiversity, but unfortunately this requires looking at multiple, disconnected databases and other information sources to understand the sites of importance in a particular area.

The Protected Planet Report series, launched in 2012, helps track international progress towards achieving Aichi Biodiversity Target 11 - a target for the global protected area network and for other related targets. One of the key messages of the 2012 Protected Planet Report was that a better understanding and more complete overview of each element of Target 11 would be helpful.

This report offers a review of literature from various sources on the impacts of the production and use of liquid biofuels, which are used mainly in the transport sector. In 2009, Campbell and Doswald (2009) published a review similar to this one, focusing on the biodiversity impacts of biofuels, on behalf of UNEP-WCMC. This report reflects on the progress made since that review.