Government policy

Food is one of the basic needs for human life. At the same time, agriculture is a leading cause of biodiversity loss, driving 80% of deforestation and consuming 70% of freshwater resources globally. Conventional farming practices have further contributed to habitat degradation, soil depletion, and species loss. This report aims to provide a general overview of how the relationship between biodiversity and agriculture is assessed.

Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet’s slide to certain environmental disaster.

This study reviews range state policy and management responses to expanding or abundant species of seals -- the Cape fur, northern fur, hooded, harp, ringed, grey, harbour and crabeater seals.

This book explores the global conservation and management of sharks. There has been a rapid decline in populations of many shark species, while new science has emerged of the critical role they play in marine ecosystems. However, conservation law and policy have been slow to develop, with only a handful of iconic species being protected worldwide.

Governments, companies, banks and civil society are placing more emphasis on the rigorous application of the mitigation hierarchy to avoid, minimize and compensate for projects' impacts on biodiversity. The final step in the mitigation hierarchy sequence are biodiversity offsets to achieve No Net Loss (NNL) or Net Gain (NG). Thirty-nine countries have existing laws or policies on NNL/NG, biodiversity offsets or compensation, and twenty-two countries are developing them.

This report is a product of cities' and local governments' efforts to protect their cities and make them safer and productive places to live and work. Today, with more than half of the world’s population living in urban areas, building resilience to natural hazards has become a pressing challenge that cannot be ignored.

The situation is alarming and irrefutable: within thirty years, even by conservative estimates, we will have burned our way through most of the oil that is readily available to us. Already, the costly side effects of dependence on fossil fuel are taking their toll. Even as oil-related conflict threatens entire nations, individual consumers are suffering from higher prices at the gas pump, rising health problems, and the grim prospect of long-term environmental damage.

This nonfiction narrative set in the Kalahari dramatizes the timeless struggle over water, the fulcrum of political power. Facing drought, scarcity and climate change the besieged indigenous Bushmen use voluntary survival strategies while Botswana's government enforces regulatory rule. Their rivalry foreshadows our world, where two in three thirsty humans will soon endure shortages, resource conflict, a $900 billion market, and a global fight for water as a human right.

This volume has been compiled to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO, which for half a century has been the UN organization responsible for fostering intergovernmental cooperation on global ocean science.