Case studies

IUCN, as a neutral forum for objectively-based consensus seeking, is facing an ever-increasing demand to conduct independent scientific reviews of controversial development projects. As IUCN gains experience in conducting such processes, it is important to document which approaches lead to success and which ones cause problems, and to draw all these lessons into a more established methodology.

This publication examines the characteristics of successful transboundary resource management. Various cases of different shared resources, from water to fish to air, are described and their strengths and weaknesses analysed.Successful management of transboundary resources is growing in relevance as resources become sparse and conflicts over them increase. However, many of its elements have not yet been sufficiently defined and applied.

For billions of people throughout the world – especially the poorest – wetlands are critical for livelihoods. Wetlands are also home to an enormous diversity of wildlife, much of it unique to freshwater habitats. Traditional separate biodiversity and livelihood assessment and economic valuation fails to present the full value of a wetland in the face of alternative wetland uses, and as a result wetlands are lost through development activities.

Live-capture, holding in captivity and export of Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins from the Solomon Islands began in 2003. These activities stimulated global interest and generated concern about the potential conservation implications. This report is based on a workshop on the assessment of Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus), with the Solomon Islands as a case study, that took place from 21–23 August 2008 in Apia, Samoa.

Governance for sustainability is defined as the set of written and unwritten rules that link ecological citizenship with institutions and norms of governance. It is a complex topic because it addresses the three issues of globalization, democracy and sustainability. No form of governance can succeed if there is no common bond between those who govern and those who are being governed.

IUCN’s Strengthening Voices for Better Choices (SVBC) project aims to promote the adoption of improved forest governance arrangements in Viet Nam and five other tropical forest countries in Asia, Africa and South America. This summary report is an output of a larger national study conducted by SVBC in Viet Nam.