China

The sustainability challenges we face today are greater than any we have previously confronted. This year, the United Nations adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Law is a necessary part of the solution to sustainability challenges. To achieve sustainability goals, appropriate and well-implemented legal frameworks and tools must be in place.

Climate change is the most significant moral and environmental issue of our time. This project seeks to help deepen explicit ethical reflection around the world on national responses to climate change by developing a publicly available record on national compliance with ethical obligations for climate change similar to the reports that are now available on national compliance with human rights obligations.

In an increasingly crowded world reconciling environmental ‘conservation’ with the ‘sustainable use’ of natural resources is now our greatest challenge. Nature conservation has traditionally focused on protecting iconic and important areas of biodiversity from human exploitation through the establishment of National Parks and World Heritage Areas.

Housing may be the Third World's most intractable problem, but mud, adobe, earth-bricks, soil-cement and other traditional building materials are cheap, readily available and can be made and used by the poor people themselves to build their own homes. Today, mud perhaps offers the only practical prospect for building the millions of houses which will be needed over the next twenty years. 

Asia has a rich cultural and natural heritage, but rapid development, population growth and an erosion of traditional practices are resulting in habitat loss and degradation, which is putting protected areas in Asia at risk and leading to serious decline in the biodiversity they harbour.

Las áreas bajo protección privada merecen un reconocimiento y respaldo mucho mayores que el que reciben en este momento.

Privately protected areas deserve far greater recognition and support than is the case at the moment. Private conservation efforts can often fill important gaps in national policies in terms of both geographic cover and speed of response to conservation challenges, yet they remain a hidden resource: ignored by governments, omitted from international conservation reporting mechanisms and left out of regional conservation strategies.

The Himalayas are the water tower of Asia and are a precious resource to be used wisely and protected for human welfare, research and eduction. This book, which consists of 18 articles, is aimed at practitioners, planners and researchers to be of use in the management, conservation and sustainable development of the Himalayan high altitude wetlands and their resources.

Cranes, a flagship species of waterbirds, have great cultural significance - especially the Siberian Crane. Yet, even after decades of conservation efforts, cranes remain threatened with 11 species at risk. To help reverse these trends, the UNEP/GEF Siberian Crane Wetland Project  was the first project to its kind to take a "flyway" approach to conservation, looking to secure the ecological integrity of a network of 16 critical wetlands in Eurasia.

As our cities continue to grow, we should defend the protection of natural areas and even try to create new space for nature within this urban fabric. This volume explains the context and concept of urban protected areas, profiles urban protected areas in 15 metropolitan areas around the world, and offers best practice guidelines.