Natural resources

Customary laws, established by communal practice and usage for generations and passed down through oral tradition, are familiar, effective and continue to be practiced to a greater or lesser extent throughout the Northern Areas. And yet few of them have been documented so far.

At the heart of ‘co-management’ of natural resources is a process of collective understanding and action by local communities and other social actors. The process brings about negotiated agreements on management roles, rights, and responsibilities, making explicit the conditions and institutions of sound decentralised governance. De facto, co-management is about sharing power.

Equitable distribution of the costs and benefits associated with conservation is a key issue in natural resource management. Addressing the underlying social, economic and cultural factors shaping social differentiation within and among communities will help reverse social inequities and will also promote more sustainable conservation.

Joint initiative between IUCN and WWF for addressing the need to protect the highly valuable deep sea ecosystems in the Mediterranean. Is included for the first time a comprehensive proposal for conservation firmly based in virtually all scientific information currently available.

The precautionary principle, or precautionary approach, is now widely accepted in environmental law and policy at international and, increasingly, national level. However, the principle remains highly controversial, its meaning contested, its acceptance and implementation inconsistent across sectors and contexts and its impacts unclear.

Poverty has become the central concern for development agencies, and because many of the areas that are most important for conserving biodiversity are occupied by poor people, or have poor people living around them, the relationship between poverty and protected areas can no longer be ignored. The relationship between poverty and protected areas is a complex one, but this book presents a balanced perspective on how protected areas relate to poverty, in both positive and negative ways.